He said a security guard: my son’s first DSS primary interview

My husband took him. It was a DSS school. Not our top choice, more of a practice run, but a real one.

In a sea of local parents, my husband counted exactly one other non-Chinese parent in that hall. DSS schools get thousands of applications and the waiting lists are enormous. We are a family where English is my son’s stronger language and his Cantonese is there, but basic. I knew all of this, and I sent him in anyway, because I am over-confident and I was playing it cool.

The report back: a few tears when they took him into the interview room. Then 30 minutes later he came out laughing and jumping, with stickers all over his shirt.

Honestly, I was thrilled. Tears at the door, stickers at the exit. I’ll take it.

That night at bedtime, I asked him how his day had gone. Casually. Like a mum who was definitely not fishing.

He told me about the games, the activities, the things he got to make. He was buzzing about all of it. Then he got this look on his face, the one he does when he has news.

I lay there in the dark doing the maths. Doctor. Engineer. Banker. That’s the list, isn’t it? That’s what a 5-year-old is supposed to say in a room where a stranger is deciding whether he’s worth a place. Not security guard.

I don’t know if there is a scoring sheet. I suspect there isn’t one, not for that question. But I went to sleep fairly sure we are not getting a callback.

Since then I’ve read up on what really goes on in these rooms, mostly to work out whether a security guard answer is fatal. Here’s the useful part, if you’re about to walk into this too.

• DSS sits outside POA. You apply straight to the school, on the school’s own timetable and rules, not through the government lottery. That’s why the dates feel random and why every school is different.

• Most schools run more than one round. The first round is usually a group. A play session, blocks or puzzles, a bit of drawing, a story, a game. Somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes, with several children in the room at once. They are not testing what your child knows. They are watching how your child behaves around other children.

• Round two is smaller and more personal. Often one to one, sometimes with you in the room, sometimes you get your own short conversation while your child is somewhere else. At a second round, the person across the table is often the principal or a senior teacher, not a junior staffer with a clipboard.

• Language is usually Cantonese and English, sometimes Putonghua. Being able to answer in both is a plus, but schools that take non-Chinese-speaking children know exactly what a 5-year-old’s Cantonese sounds like. Fluent in neither is more common than you think.

• What they actually seem to note down: does the child say hello and goodbye, can they follow one simple instruction, do they share and wait their turn, do they answer in a full sentence, can they say their own name and something about home, and how do they cope when they don’t know an answer.

• Questions your child may get: introduce yourself. What do you want to be when you grow up. What’s happening in this picture. Listen to a story and tell me what happened. Colours, shapes, counting, sorting. What do you do when you’re sad or angry. What’s your favourite food or animal.

• Questions you may get: why this school. How would you describe your child. How do you handle a meltdown. How do you help with learning at home. What does a weekend look like. Sometimes, how you’d support Chinese at home, which for our family is the real question.

• A portfolio is sometimes asked for and often not, at P1. If the school wants one it will say so. Don’t build a folder no one asked for.

Some practical things I’ll do differently next time. Arrive early and let them settle. Feed them first. Don’t drill a script, because a rehearsed 5-year-old gets found out in about 2 questions, and a real one who cries at the door and comes out with stickers is completely normal. They have watched hundreds of children do exactly that.

A week later, he had a second DSS interview, at another school.

I’ll tell you how that one went, and what I did differently, in part two.

I’m Kanwal. I’m doing P1 admissions this year, in English, in a city where most of the information isn’t. I’m building HKSchoolPal so the next parent doesn’t start from nothing: every school in Hong Kong, every published fee traced back to the source, and nothing invented.

Send this to one other parent who’s about to start the interview rounds.