PLKCKY School

Po Leung Kuk Choi Kai Yau School (Chinese name: "保良局蔡繼有學校", abbreviation: PLKCKY School, PLKCKY, CKY School or CKY) is a through-train private independent school for boys and girls aged 6–18, ranging from primary through to International Baccalaureate Diploma students (IB). Located in Cheung Sha Wan on Piper's Hill, CKY is a school with approximately 1,700+ students. The address of the school is 6 Caldecott Road, Piper's Hill, Sham Shui Po, Kowloon, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. The school opened and moved into its new campus in September 2009. It is a school of Po Leung Kuk. Po Leung Kuk was founded as the Society for the Protection of Women and Children and is a charitable organization in Hong Kong that provides support for orphaned children, education and other services.

## Students and Year Levels

In this school, Years 1–5 are the Primary students, 6–8 are the Junior Secondary students, 9–10 are the Senior Secondary IGCSE students, and 11–12 are the Senior Secondary IB students.

Primary and Junior Secondary have a shared timetable for the entire class, although some lessons differ for different students, for example, Design and Technology classes. Senior Secondary IGCSE students and Senior Secondary IB students receive a unique timetable which differs for each student and is made according to the subjects the student chooses and other influencing factors. Teachers also have timetables. The timetables are made with aSc TimeTables.

## School Facilities

The whole school campus consists of four main blocks:

**Teaching Block:** 60 classrooms, STEM Room, Reading Galleries and lobbies providing ample space for reading, discussions, and exhibitions.

**Activity Block:** Integrated Science Laboratories, Music Rooms, DT workshop, Food Technology Room, Textiles Room, Visual Art and Design Rooms, I.T. Labs, Language Laboratory, Geography and History dedicated rooms, Student Activity Centres, Video & Audio, Interview Rooms and Multi-Purpose Rooms.

**Administration Block:** Principal’s Office, Staff Rooms, General Office, Medical Inspection Room, Conference Rooms, Student Guidance Rooms.

**Amenities Block:** Indoor Swimming Pool, Lau Lai Man Auditorium (seating capacity of more than 1000), Library, Lecture Theatre.

The sports ground includes basketball courts, volleyball courts, football pitches, handball court, netball court, and a covered playground.

A list of facilities is available here.

## Geography

The school is located on Piper's Hill, Cheung Sha Wan, North Kowloon, Hong Kong. The lot number of the school is NKIL 6440, according to Lands Department of Hong Kong, stands for the "New Kowloon Inland Lot". The registered land area is 1.0509 hectares.

The image on the right shows the DAP-RGBI image of PLKCKY, taken by the Lands Department of Hong Kong, on 11 September 2018. The red areas in the photo represent greenery, as the images are received by infrared cameras.

Near the security gate, the elevation AMSL is **139.7m**, ranging from **120.9m** near the lower ground floor Indoor Car Park **to 134.2m** near the basketball court, all according to the 11-NW-3C Map from the Lands Department of Hong Kong, updated on 13 Jun 2019.

## History of Current Site

The school was originally based in another building. The current location of the school originally had another building complex which was another school called The Sir Robert Black College of Education (Chinese: '柏立基教育學院'), a branch school of the Grantham College of Education (Chinese: '葛量洪教育學院'). Teachers were trained to be teachers there with real students. The main building, with 6 floors, consists of an auditorium and a gymnasium on the top floors. It also has multiple dormitories and staff areas. The dormitories were later converted to classrooms for a higher capacity for the college. However, the number of students constantly decreased as they prefer the Tai Po campus.

In 1964, '柏師' officially settled on the permanent site of 6 Caldecott Road, Piper's Hill. At that time, because the '工務司署' insisted that the design of the '富國教育學院' should be applied to the '柏師' school complex, the staff of '柏師' expressed disagreement. For example, in 1947, the then '院長張伯倫' requested the '工務司署' to build a gymnasium at the '柏師' school complex but was ignored. This led to the complex being not completed until 1974.

In 1974, '柏師' moved to the new school at 6 Caldecott Road, Piper's Hill, and the original site was given to '葛師' as a branch school.

Since 1994-09-01, The Sir Robert Black College of Education has been merged with four other colleges of education as part of the Hong Kong Institute of Education (now known as the Hong Kong Education University). In the beginning, the two campuses remained one of the campuses of the College of Education until they moved to Tai Po in October 1997. In 1999, the branch school was changed into the '浸信會沙田圍呂明才小學'. When PLKCKY moved in, dormitories were lent to Yew Chung International School (YCIS). After the move-out from YCIS to Yau Tong, the original school building was demolished in December 2007 to 2008 and rebuilt into the permanent school building of the Po Leung Kuk Choi Kai Yau School. The re-opening of the new campus was in March 2009.

The gallery below shows the timeline of the Caldecott Area. Aerial Photographs are taken from the Government of HKSAR, (link: 'https://www.hkmapservice.gov.hk/OneStopSystem/map-search/getPreviewFile?itemId=\*', where \* is the id of each photograph. Reproduction in paper form is prohibited. The editor has rights to display information freely accessible by the public on the surface web*.* The gallery shows images from 1945 through 1998.

[10 NOV 1945 @ 2000 ft] Not much buildings around[27 DEC 1956 @ 16700 ft] Unknown structure observed, presumably a water station[27 JAN 1963 @ 2700 ft] Structure of the water reservoir, now Football Pitch, built[16 MAY 1967 @ 6250 ft] Piper's Hill Quarters under construction[?? ??? 1969, SEQ 2203] Zoomed in picture of Piper's Hill Quarters, an old building not yet built[?? ??? 1972, SEQ274] Old CKY campus WIP[10 DEC 1973 @ 3000 ft] The Caldecott Old Government Shelter has been built built[15 SEP 1977 @ 2000 ft] Renovation across all buildings[21 DEC 1977 @ 4000ft] No description[31 OCT 1998 @ 4000 ft] Roundabout at Caldecott Road and Tai Po Road Intersection built
## Reviews

* International School Advisor
* Google Maps
* Indeed
* Edarabia
* GeoExpat

## ALKF+

Andrew Lee King Fun & Associates Architects Ltd. is an architectural practice that designed the school building. Below is a description of the school on the project page of the ALKF+ website.

"Po Leung Kuk Choi Kai Yau School is a through-train school with both primary and secondary divisions. We believe a school is place to learn, an opportunity to encounter the world around oneself at a primary level. Located atop of a hill site overlooking the Kowloon peninsula with unparalleled panoramic views over the surrounding mountain range, the building massing spawns spontaneously with the ‘Fan’ shape of Caldecott Hill. The voids derived from this unique building form is again replenished with light, air, and other elements of nature, bringing in life to the new classrooms and allowing interaction to physically take place between the students and the environment they are exposed to, engaging nature into the process of learning, again."

According to the site, the awards for the project were 'HKIA ANNUAL AWARDS 2009 - SHORTLISTED PROJECT' and 'WAN AWARDS 2010 - EDUCATION'.

Below is a gallery of the images on the project webpage.

The garlands on the windows of some classrooms and red Christmas potted plants and the Christmas tree on the Ground Floor indicate that the time when the pictures were taken was near Christmas. The Outdoor STEM Room is not present in the picture where it should be seen and the Football Pitch is of the old design, indicating that these pictures are taken in the (relatively) early days of PLKCKY.

An analysis of the metadata of the images shows that the pictures were taken by Fung Tsang using a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera from November to December 2009. The copyright holder of the images is 'FungTsang@ST UNITED STUDIO LTD'.

## Trivia

Po Leung Kuk Choi Kai Yau School is the only school listed under the '獨立優質私校' (Independent high-quality private schools) category on the www.poleungkuk.org.hk webpage for alumni.

## Further Reading

* 柏立基教育學院 Wikiwand article
* 葛量洪教育學院 Wikipedia article
* ALKF+ project page on Po Leung Kuk Choi Kai Yau School