Why ESF's IB Results Are Better Than You Think: How to Read an IB Average

Last Updated

09.07.2026

8 min read

A 42-point average from 61 selected students and a 36-point average from more than a thousand unselected ones are not the same number. A parent’s guide to reading Hong Kong’s IB league tables.

Every July the International Baccalaureate (IB) results arrive, the league tables go up, and one number does all the talking: the average. St Paul’s Co-educational College at 42.6. German Swiss at 42. The English Schools Foundation (ESF) at 36.4, a shade below the Hong Kong average of 37.02. Cue the familiar verdict in parent groups: the selective schools are “elite”, and ESF is “just okay”.

We spend our working lives inside these admissions systems, and we think that verdict misreads the numbers. Not because the high averages are not real (they are, and they are genuinely excellent), but because an average tells you almost nothing until you ask two questions. How many students sat behind that number? And who was allowed to sit?

All figures below are from schools’ own official publications for the May 2026 session unless noted, and all 2026 results are preliminary, pre-appeal numbers. Derived or estimated values are marked with a tilde (~).

Not every average is playing the same game

Hong Kong’s IB schools run three very different models, and their averages are not comparable across models.

Dual-track local schools select academically at Secondary 1, then, in the senior years, enter a chosen group for the IB Diploma Programme (IBDP) while the rest of the year sits the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE). Diocesan Boys’ School describes its own structure plainly: “HKDSE students are streamed into 6 classes and IBDP students into 2 classes in each grade.” Its IB average therefore describes roughly a quarter of the year group. St Paul’s Co-educational College entered 61 students for the IB in 2026, while its most recent HKDSE cohort numbered 109, so around a third of the year sits behind the IB headline. At St Stephen’s College the split is 50 IB candidates alongside 65 HKDSE candidates.

These are outstanding schools posting outstanding results. The point is simply what the number describes: the streamed slice, not the whole school.

Selective international schools (German Swiss, Chinese International School, ISF Academy, Victoria Shanghai Academy, Singapore International School, Canadian International School and others) put the whole cohort through the IB, but shape that cohort at the front door with entrance assessments years earlier.

Non-selective schools, above all ESF, do neither. Entry turns on whether a child can access an English-medium classroom, not on an academic entrance exam, and essentially every student can sit the full Diploma. ESF entered 1,024 candidates in 2026, roughly 35 per cent of every IB candidate in Hong Kong.

The 2026 numbers, side by side

Ultra-selective, dual-track (the average describes the IB stream only):

St Paul’s Co-educational College: 42.6 average, 61 candidates, 91.8% scored 40+, six perfect 45s
Diocesan Boys’ School: 2026 average not yet published (41.3 in 2025), ~65 candidates, five perfect 45s
Po Leung Kuk Ngan Po Ling College: 41.4 average, ~23 candidates, 73.9% scored 40+
St Stephen’s College: five perfect 45s, a school record (official 2025 average: 40)

Selective international:

German Swiss International School: 42 average, 63 candidates, 75% scored 40+, eight perfect 45s
Victoria Shanghai Academy: 39 average, 122 candidates, nine perfect 45s
Canadian International School: 39 average, ~144 candidates, 69 students scored 40+
ISF Academy: 38.5 average, 101 candidates (as reported; official release pending)
Singapore International School: 38.4 average, ~52 candidates, 100% pass

Non-selective (ESF):

Sha Tin College: 37.7 average, 149 candidates, 45% scored 40+
West Island School: 37.1 average, 131 candidates, 37% scored 40+, 100% pass
King George V School: 36.7 average, 214 candidates, 29% scored 40+, seven perfect 45s
South Island School: 36.4 average, 150 diplomas awarded, four perfect 45s
Renaissance College: 36.3 average, 134 candidates, three perfect 45s
ESF network: 36.4 average, 1,024 candidates, 98.3% pass, 27 perfect 45s

Hong Kong overall averaged 37.02 across 2,912 candidates; the global average is 30.88. Read down the list and the pattern is impossible to miss: the highest averages sit on the smallest, most selected cohorts. That is not a coincidence, and it is not a scandal either. It is arithmetic.

Count the students, not just the average

Percentages flatter the gatekeepers. Turn the rates into actual students, the same calculation for every school that has published enough to compute it, and the picture changes.

St Paul’s: 91.8% of 61 is 56 students at 40 points or above. A magnificent result.
Sha Tin College, fully non-selective: 45% of its 145 diploma students is ~65 students at 40 or above. That is more students over 40 than St Paul’s entered for the IB at all.
King George V School: 214 candidates, its largest cohort ever and up 35 per cent since 2024, produced ~62 students over 40 and seven perfect 45s while turning nobody away for grades.
Across the ESF network: roughly 320 students scored 40 or above, and 27 scored a perfect 45. Of the at least 73 perfect scores recorded in Hong Kong so far this year, more than one in three came from ESF.

Run that same sum across the whole city (chart below) and an honest pattern appears: the biggest absolute producers of top scores are simply the schools that enter the most students. The single-school leader is Canadian International School, whose ~144 candidates included 69 students over 40, and Sha Tin and KGV sit right behind it, ahead of every school with a 40-plus average. The rate rewards the entrance gate. The headcount rewards the school. If your definition of an elite school is “a place that produces large numbers of top performers”, ESF competes with the very best in the city, and it does so while educating everyone who walks in.

Supply, demand and the feeling of prestige

ESF was established by government ordinance in 1967 to provide English-medium education for Hong Kong. Today it is the largest English-medium international school organisation in the city: 22 schools and kindergartens, more than 18,000 students. Its mandate has never been to run an admissions tournament; its mandate is to be big enough for the city it serves.

Compare the arithmetic of scarcity. Chinese International School offers 96 Reception places a year and is heavily oversubscribed. ESF opens on the order of a thousand-plus Year 1 places across its network each year (our estimate; ESF does not publish a total). A school with 96 places will always feel more exclusive than a system with a thousand, whatever happens in the classrooms afterwards.

But exclusivity is a property of supply, not of teaching. Neither model is better; they are different mandates. The mistake is judging the system built for abundance by the yardstick of the boutique, then calling the difference “quality”.

Three questions to ask before you trust any IB average

How many students sat the full Diploma? A 41 from ~23 students and a 36 from more than a thousand are different achievements.
What share of the graduating year is that? If the school also runs an HKDSE stream, the IB average describes the selected slice, not the school.
How many students actually scored 40 or above? Rates flatter small, filtered cohorts; headcounts show you the engine room.

None of this diminishes the selective schools. An average of 42.6 is a superb outcome, and their teachers and students earned it. But so is putting 1,024 unselected teenagers through one of the most demanding school-leaving curricula in the world and having 98 per cent of them walk away with the Diploma, with 27 perfect scores along the way. They are different achievements, measured on different denominators, and Hong Kong parents deserve to see both clearly.

Figures compiled 9 July 2026 from official school publications and results PDFs, the ESF public examination results page, IB Organization releases and Hong Kong press coverage. All 2026 results are preliminary and pre-appeal; derived or estimated values are marked with a tilde. For school-by-school detail, see our full 2026 Hong Kong IB results league table.

Disclaimer: the author is a KGV old boy from the years before the school even offered the IB Diploma, which makes him both too old for these league tables and, let’s be honest, slightly biased. The numbers, however, are not. Every figure in this piece comes from the schools’ own official publications, and we would print them unchanged if they pointed the other way.