Khanmigo for Hong Kong Teachers: Free Planning Tools Work Here, the Student Tutor Does Not

A Primary 6 maths teacher opens Khan Academy during Wednesday break, hunting for hint prompts for next week's ratio unit. A colleague from English leans over: "Can pupils use that AI tutor at home?" She scrolls to the subscription page and reads aloud: "Currently available only in the United States — so we can plan with it, but they cannot buy it themselves."

Khanmigo is most often read in Hong Kong as a student AI tutor. What Hong Kong teachers actually get is the free teacher toolkit; the Socratic student conversation, unless you are inside a district partnership, is not on offer in this city.

Two product lines

Khan Academy splits Khanmigo into two paths that barely meet.

The first is Khanmigo for Teachers: 25-plus tools covering lesson plans, rubrics, exit tickets, an IEP assistant, report card comments, Class Snapshot and more, running on Azure OpenAI Service with Microsoft donating the Azure infrastructure. In December 2025 this toolkit opened to more than 180 countries and territories, Hong Kong included.

The second is the Khanmigo student tutor: embedded in Khan Academy videos and exercises, questioning pupils towards their own answers rather than handing them over. It is the famous part, priced at US$4 a month or US$44 a year excluding sales tax, and officially United States only.

Roster sync through Clever and ClassLink, state-level data agreements and curriculum alignment are all built around United States K-12 districts. Teachers elsewhere receive the teacher tools; the student layer and curriculum skeleton do not travel with them.

What Hong Kong can and cannot reach

On the teacher side

Hong Kong teachers with the teacher role, Traditional Chinese interface and age 18-plus get the full teacher toolkit free — no card, no trial countdown. Pupils logging in to do Khan Academy practice remains free worldwide and fully available here; what is unavailable is the Khanmigo tutor conversation.

Class Snapshot shows a class's last seven days of learning time, completion and mastery progress, and the Documents area stores everything generated. The interface supports Traditional Chinese, but there is no Cantonese voice mode.

The wall on the student side

Hong Kong pupils cannot subscribe to the Khanmigo tutor. Teachers cannot enable it for them. Classroom student use runs only through a Khan Academy Districts partnership; no official page states whether Hong Kong schools can join, so contact the Districts team directly.

Inside a partnership, administrators can see Khanmigo chat summaries and the system flags interactions that may be inappropriate; pupils also see a notice that chats are visible to parents and teachers. None of that belongs to the free teacher tools.

A single-lesson walkthrough

This flow assumes you teach Primary 6 mathematics and are preparing a ratio and proportion unit, with a three-level hint ladder so stuck pupils get direction rather than answers.

Register and create the class. Sign up at khanacademy.org with the teacher role. Create "6A Mathematics" in the Teacher Dashboard, hand out the class code, and assign ratio exercises from Khan Academy that overlap with the Hong Kong scheme of work.

Build the hint ladder with Clear Directions. In Teacher Tools, paste the rules below — portable to any school AI tutor:

Subject: Primary 6 Mathematics. Unit: ratio and proportion (finding an unknown).
Rule: never give the answer or a full worked solution.

Level 1: "Is this about part-to-whole or a ratio between two quantities? Which baseline will you find first?"
Level 2: "If the ratio is 3:5, how many parts in total? How many parts does the unknown take?"
Level 3: "Try this: 12 sweets split 2:3 between two people — five parts total, then each share. Use the same steps on yours."
Check: "Substitute your answer back. Does the relationship still hold?"

Generate matching assessment. Use Multiple Choice Quiz for five questions and Exit Ticket for two end-of-lesson checks. Khan Academy questions often carry American units; one teacher reported spending eight minutes changing "pounds of flour" to kilograms.

Review learning data. Class Snapshot shows who completed practice and who lingered over the last seven days — but you cannot read any Khanmigo conversation, because Hong Kong pupils do not have tutor accounts.

Put hints where pupils can actually reach them. In class the teacher can run the ladder by hand; for homework extension the same rules need a school platform pupils can log into and teachers can read. See the article on the scaffolded AI tutor.

For Hong Kong teachers, the last step of using Khanmigo for planning often happens outside Khan Academy — moving the "no answers" rules to where pupils actually sign in.

Pricing and hidden costs

Khan Academy promises its content library and learning platform remain 100% free permanently. Teacher tools are free with no published usage cap. Learner and parent subscriptions are US$4 a month or US$44 a year but United States only; district partnership pricing is unpublished.

Nominally zero cost still leaves three non-money bills for Hong Kong schools: localisation time (American standards into Hong Kong language and context), expectation gap on the student side (guided learning demonstrated in class, unavailable at home), and if you pursue a partnership, roster sync and review of United States data processing. A Hong Kong school cannot pay to turn the tutor on for pupils.

On privacy, Khan Academy states it does not sell personal information, runs no third-party advertising, and bars model providers from training on student data. Processing is primarily in the United States; schools with data-location requirements must review the contract themselves.

Gaps a school platform still has to fill

Khanmigo's pedagogy — Socratic guidance, no direct answers — deserves respect, but Hong Kong schools still need four things it does not supply.

Student reach. However good a tutor is, if pupils cannot log in it does not exist. A school needs a tutor Hong Kong pupils can use and where teachers can see the conversations.

Curriculum alignment. Primary 6 sequencing, textbook units and TSA question styles differ from United States standards. Once the scheme of work and materials sit in a school knowledge base, the tutor speaks in the language of your unit.

Cross-module student view. Class Snapshot sees only Khan Academy activity; school tests, homework and AI interaction need to sit side by side to support a PIE review cycle.

Grant reporting. A per-school annual fee with AI usage included and usage reports attached is the clearest structure for an EDB funding application (up to HK$500,000 per school, deadline 31 August 2028). Edor.ai covers roughly 800 pupils and 100 staff on the annual fee, with teacher-set hint levels and conversations retained in ai_audit_logs.

Common misreadings

• The claim: Khanmigo in Hong Kong works like the United States, with the student AI tutor available. What actually happens: Paid student subscriptions are United States only. Hong Kong teachers get the free teacher tools; classroom student use requires a district partnership whose Hong Kong eligibility is unconfirmed.

• The claim: Class Snapshot equals teacher monitoring of pupil AI chats. What actually happens: Class Snapshot analyses seven days of learning data inside Khan Academy only. Khanmigo chat summaries exist only inside a district partnership, not with free teacher tools.

• The claim: Traditional Chinese support means Hong Kong curriculum alignment. What actually happens: Interface and responses support Traditional Chinese, but maths and science content is built on United States standards, with no Cantonese, and teachers must localise.

Three things to try on Monday

1. Register at khanacademy.org with a school email, set the teacher role and Traditional Chinese interface, and use Clear Directions in Teacher Tools to draft a three-level hint ladder for your next unit.
2. Screenshot the official line that paid subscriptions are "currently available only in the United States" and drop it into your next panel meeting deck so colleagues do not assume pupils can subscribe.
3. Open Class Snapshot for one class's last seven days of completion, compare it with your school homework records, and note the gap between in-platform and in-school data — a one-page note that helps when you later ask for cross-module student views in a school AI evaluation.