Dr Maggie Koong May Kay (1962–2025) was a Hong Kong early childhood educator, head principal of Victoria Educational Organisation and founder and head principal of Victoria Shanghai Academy. The citation for her honorary fellowship from The Hong Kong Institute of Education in 2015 records that her mother, former Urban Council member Ting Yuk-chu, opened a kindergarten in 1965 and that she helped care for young children there as a teenager. She went to Mount Holyoke College in the United States intending to study medicine, but a exchange placement caring for children with special needs in hospital changed her direction, and she switched to psychology and education. She taught kindergarten in Massachusetts in 1984. Returning to Hong Kong to visit in 1985, she was persuaded by her mother to stay and, at the age of 22, took charge of the family's early childhood organisation, first as principal of its kindergarten in Kornhill, where she introduced a structured approach tailored to children's developmental stages. She later became head principal of Victoria, promoting a student-centred bilingual curriculum; she founded Victoria Primary School in 1996 and a secondary and primary branch in 2007. The organisation now runs 19 branches in Hong Kong and the mainland, all authorised as International Baccalaureate World Schools. She took a Master of Education at the University of Hong Kong and a Doctor of Education at Durham University. She was named a Hong Kong Ten Outstanding Young Person in 2000, received the Bronze Bauhinia Star in 2013, an honorary Doctor of Humanities from Whittier College in 2014, and became the first Chinese to serve as world president of the World Organisation for Early Childhood Education (OMEP). The HKBU Foundation records that in 2004 she founded Victoria Shanghai Academy, Hong Kong's first through-train IB World School, offering bilingual education from primary to pre-university level. She was also vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Committee for UNICEF and a project consultant to UNESCO, and was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 2017. She died on 18 July 2025.
Achievements
- 1996 · Founded Victoria Primary School
- 2004 · Founded Victoria Shanghai Academy
- 2014 · Became the first Chinese world president of OMEP