Original at: HKK 22
The Copy for: HKK 9 Insti jhelon on Para(s)
VISIT OF DEPUTY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE
(SIR LESLIE MONSON)
TO HONG KONG, OCTOBER, 1969
EDUCATION
Note No. 11
333
Кальци
SOUL
raise.
The notes below are for background information and include
usive briefing. There are no matters we would wish to
2.
19.7 per cent of total expenditure (21.3 per cent of re- curt expenditure) is absorbed by education in the 1969/70
estimates. This high proportion is steadily rising.
Pri Education
3. It is the aim of the Hong Kong Government to provide by 1970/71 free or subsidised education to all children of primary · school age who seek it. By that date a total of 695,000 places in Government and subsidised primary schools will exceed the * estimated total of 650,000 children of primary school age.
4. The fees charged at Government and aided primary schools are very low, ranging from HK$20 to HK$10 a year. Headmasters of these schools have authority to remit fees in part or in whole, according to need, up to a ceiling of 20 per cent of the total potential fee income of their schools, and authorisa- tion to exceed this limit can be obtained where necessary.
xx But D/E
Son's Wrongly that 50 Compundary educdin sights of the Hong Kong Government.
Could bever
love
**
Free compulsory primary education could now be within the
In his 1969 Budget address
to the Legislative Council the Governor said that he had "the Then whew.drening, gravest doubts about the practicability of making it effectively it wored be empently compulsory in our present circumstances". He went on to say or Hong Kong conditions
низ
that he hoped by reducing the cost to the parent, and in other | crowding and Irshad
ways removing as far as possible the reasons why children fail Std 2-shift schoch
to attend school, "we shall be able to reduce the problem of for ри асталась Аран
non-attendance at school to a point where legislation can cope Before The Land
with the inevitable residue of those who wilfully keep their
children from school". In semi-official correspondence he has * Dwecker of Education explames that there might will be areas where there were insufficent
flames for all chuldren away to lectin of Schools
CONFIDENTIAL
/ told
...