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finances were pretty sound, the announcements we made about our intention to reduce primary school fees to a standard $20 per annum ($10 in rural schools) and about our desire to expand the public assistance programme very considerably and make it eventually a wholly Government-run and supported affair, aroused the most interest. My innovation of saying some- thing about what I personally would like to see done seemed to be welcomed: but it is a risky one. It is an oddity that the Governor is about the one person in the Colony who really shouldn't give his personal opinions on how the Colony ought to be run, in advance of consultation with Ex. Co. and Leg. Co.: However, this time the circumstances made it a little easier to do, although whether it should become customary is another matter.
To take primary school fees first: the next step I would like to see taken in due course would be to stop thinking of these small sums as school fees at all, but to call them a registration fee or something like that; possibly reducing them even further a bit and at the same time of course continuing to allow remission on need. I am sure it is much better psychologically for parents to feel they are paying a little and therefore have some right to an interest in what goes on in the primary schools, as a matter of human dignity and to fit in with Chinese habits of thought. At the same time, one does want some earnest of a parent's intentions about entering and keeping a child in a particular school, or one may get a lot of chopping and changing. Furthermore, if there is nothing whatever to pay, it is more than possible that racketeers will get into the act, play on the feeling that simple parents will have that surely somebody has to be paid somewhere for such a valuable service, and start collecting bogus registration fees on the pretence that only thus will a child get accepted into school. We have had plenty of examples of this sort of thing being worked in other spheres. However, these possible developments are as yet only personal ideas, and we haven't got very far with them.
Finally, in primary schools, it is a fact that we are now starting to worry about having too many primary school places in a few years time, when the results of a dropping birthrate begin to have their effect!
1971.
This may happen as early as
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