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14
Note No. 11
VISIT OF DEPUTY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE
(SIR LESLIE MONSON)
TO HONG KONG, OCTOBER, 1969
EDUCATION
Кальци
The notes below are for background information and include some defensive briefing. There are no matters we would wish to
raise.
2. 19.7 per cent of total expenditure (21.3 per cent of re- current expenditure) is absorbed by education in the 1969/70 estimates. This high proportion is steadily rising.
Primary 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.
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Said Wrongly that 5.
**
Free compulsory primary education could now be within the
Compudary eduedin sights of the Hong Kong Government. In his 1969 Budget address
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to the Legislative Council the Governor said that he had "the Then" who draning gravest doubts about the practicability of making it effectively is wired be infondly compulsory in our present circumstances". He went on to say on trong King conditions
that he hoped by reducing the cost to the parent, and in other | crowding and Insert
ways removing as far as possible the reasons why children fail Shd 2-stuft schoth
to attend school, "we shall be able to reduce the problem of non-attendance at school to a point where legislation can cope with the inevitable residue of those who wilfully keep their children from school". In semi-official correspondence he has * Dwecker of Educdim explained that there might will be areas where there were insufficent
flames for all children sway to location of Schools
Before The Land
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1/12/67