PERSONAL &
· CONFIDENTIAL
Esharcted
4 HKK
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they follow outside practice. You will, I hope, Iorgive me therefore if I set all this background to the specific matters you mention in your letter.
You raise two points in the field of education, and I should first explain that on these we are already further forward than has perhaps been brought to your attention. The offer of a fee-free primary education to all desiring it has been a stated goal for some 15 years at least; and during this period fees have been progressively reduced; but we have only recently achieved the background situation and provided the infrastructure necessary to eliminate fees entirely. This has taken time because of the need, in constructing this infrastructure, to cater for a 4-fold increase in population since the late 1940s.
But I now hope and expect that, subject to the approval of the Legislature, all fees will be eliminated from the normal run of Government and Government-aided primary schools at a suitable moment in the school year early in 1971. Sufficient (broadly speaking) such aided primary school places are becoming available to accommodate the one-sixth of the population who are of primary school age: teachers needed can we think be found, and will be assisted by early 1971 by a system of educational TV broadcasts; and the economy (faced with paying for a truly free system, since no educational rate is raised) can stand the cost (at $15 million per annum) of reducing the present fee from (unless remitted) 27/- per annum to nil: provided of course our revenues do not deteriorate sharply as a result of the restrictions looming from so many directions on our trade.
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Finally, the costs (at $250 million capital costs and $63 million per annum recurrent costs) of a further massive step forward in post-primary education, aimed at providing 3 years aided post-primary schooling for all desiring it, have been taken into account and
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