number of Members of Farliament received letters from Hong Kong on the subject. Petitions were sent to the Secretary of State by the Joint Council of farent/Teacher Associations of the English-speaking; schools and by the Association of European Civil Servants. The latter organisation at one point contem- plated taking the unprecedented step of sending a delegation to London to appeal to the Secretary of State.
5.
In reply to this criticism the Government explained that - (a). For several years (1965-69) the fees at the
English schools had been held at an artificially
low level;
(b) The increase in fees was necessary as a result of
the implementation of the policy of parity for educational subsidies agreed in 1965;
(c)
(a)
(e)
Costings undertaken in 1970 with a view to
reviewing the scale of fees recommended in 1965
had shown that the English schools were much more
expensive to run than the equivalent Chinese schools; The principle of parity of subsidy was accepted by the vast majority of parents in Hong Kong;
Equitable arrangements would be made for parents
in the lower income groups.
On 22 July, the Government announced that the introduction
of the increase in school fees had been postponed from
1 September 1971 to 1 January 1972 in order that full consider-
ation could be given to the recommendations of the Salaries Commission (which reported at the end of June) on the question of
2
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