The Education Bureau on Wednesday approved fee hike applications from 190 schools, including 64 international institutions.

Fifty-three schools under the Direct Subsidy Scheme will raise their tuition fees by an average of 4.76 percent, while 73 private independent schools will charge 5.36 percent more.

Sixty-four international schools won approval for a 4.53 percent hike, while one private primary school will bump up fees by more than 10 percent.

But the application from one international school was rejected.

The bureau has also completed its fee review for 705 government-subsidised kindergartens.

Around 90 percent of half-day kindergartens will have the fees fully waived for the current academic year.

As for full-day kindergartens, the median semester fee now stands at HK$998, HK$58 more from last year.

Mervyn Cheung, who chairs the Hong Kong Education Policy Concern Organisation, said the adjustments were “within expectations”.

But it could still be a bitter pill for some parents to swallow, he felt.

"Most of the parents, either they're not making good business or their incomes or even their jobs are under some kind of uncertainty. If there are regular yearly fee rises, certainly it would pose some kind of difficulty to them in making ends meet," Cheung said.

Schools, meanwhile, should also justify why they are charging parents more.

"They must make sure that the money is carefully spent so that the teaching quantity and quality would not be unduly affected or at least can be maintained at the previous level,” he explained.

The perennial fee hikes might force some parents to pull their children from private schools, and enrol them in subsidised ones instead, Cheung predicted.