HKSchoolPal
Choosing a school in Hong Kong, without the guesswork
School information here isn't scarce. It's just sitting in someone else's WhatsApp group.
Every Hong Kong school in one place. 2,325 of them, from the Education Bureau's own register, with real fees, hours, districts and a map. Free to start, and no school has ever paid to be in it.
I'm looking for a small group to use it properly before it opens up, and tell me what's wrong with it.
Who I'm looking for
Parents in it right now
You'll spot the missing question within 30 seconds, because you asked it last week.
Parents who've come out the other side
You know which school was nothing like its prospectus. That's the whole point of the app.
Teachers
You see what a school is like on a Tuesday, not on an open day.
School leadership and admissions staff
If I've got your school wrong, I'd rather hear it from you than from a parent who acted on it.
Developers and app builders
Please try to break it. I want the bug report, the accessibility complaint, and the 'why on earth did you do it that way'.
Anyone who's felt shut out of the system
New to Hong Kong, no Cantonese, nobody to ask. You're who this is for.
Who's building it
I'm Kanwal. I'm a social scientist, a mom of 2, and I have no technical background at all.
I built this with AI. I don't write code. I describe what I want, argue with it, check what it gives me, and throw away the parts that are wrong. That last bit turns out to be the actual job.
I started it because I found a full day place for my son at 7 months pregnant, and only because a friend had already visited the schools and told me the truth. Nobody should need to know the right person to get information that's already public.
I build it in the open, mistakes included. The app once told parents there were 1,914 whole day kindergartens, out of 997 kindergartens. No error, no warning. A person had to read the screen and notice. That's why I want you looking at it.
