A Hong Kong man was sentenced to community service after threatening to set himself on fire in a protest against his son's failure to get into an elite school, reports said on Thursday.

Paul Li protested on top of a footbridge over one of the busiest roads in the southern Chinese city last September after his son was denied a place at an English-language school, The Standard newspaper reported.

Li doused himself in gasoline and threatened to set himself alight during the mid-morning protest, forcing police to block three lanes of Hennessy Road, a major transport artery in the city of seven million people.

The 53-year-old was sentenced Wednesday to 150 hours of community service after pleading guilty to one count of carrying out an act liable to cause obstruction in a public place.

Li apologized for his actions but said he felt he had no other way to draw attention to his case, after the government cut the number of classes at 200 secondary schools to preserve teaching jobs.

"I tried to make my complaint known in other ways, but nothing worked," he was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post, adding that his son had excellent grades and deserved a place at a good school.

Hong Kong is struggling to meet growing demand for English-language secondary school places and is often criticized for spending too little on education.

Its education spending was 3.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2010, according to U.N. figures, relatively little by the standards of other rich economies.

International chambers of commerce complain that the government's failure to address the shortage of English-language schooling is damaging the financial hub's competitiveness against regional rivals such as Shanghai. (AFP)