Hong Kong should immediately introduce a residency period for subsidised university degree places instead of gradually implementing it over two years, to prevent the dependants of non-local talent from exploiting the transition, a concern group has said.

The call was issued in a petition from the Hong Kong Local Students Rights Concern Group, but was dismissed by the Education Bureau on Wednesday night, with authorities arguing it would take time to prepare for the city’s university entrance exams.

The bureau also said it believed that the children of non-local talent would not rush to sit the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exams before the transition period ended.

Last month, the government announced that such children would be required to stay in Hong Kong for at least two years to become eligible for resident student benefits at publicly funded tertiary education institutions, as part of efforts to prevent abuse.

Authorities said that eligibility would be tightened over a transition period, with a one-year residency requirement to be introduced for the 2027-28 academic year, before the threshold rose to two years for 2028-29, to give people a reasonable amount of time to make plans.

The coming policy means candidates sitting their DSE exams next year will be unaffected, while students taking the assessments in 2027 will only be subject to a one-year residency requirement.