HKK 280
280/6
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY 3. 51 Foreign and Commonwealth Office
· 7 AUG 1978
DESK OFFICER
INDEX
London SW1A 2AH
69
No
PA
Acton 1
있도
31 July 1978
From The Minister
THE RT HON THE LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS
No Thompsor
Dear fast,
Thank you for your letter of 15 July enclosing further correspondence from Mr Ha, the Chairman of the Education Action Group in Hong Kong, about the dispute involving the Golden Jubilee Secondary School in Hong Kong.
Since I wrote to you last month the Committee of Inquiry which I mentioned in my previous letter has produced an interim report recommending a compromise solution to the dispute. This compromise has been welcomed by all the parties involved and by the general public in Hong Kong (including, I believe, the Education Action Group).
In view of this development, you may consider that the matters raised in Mr Ha's letters of 3 and 4 July (written before the interim report was published) have been mainly overtaken by events. However, it would perhaps be helpful if I clarified the specific point raised by Mr Ha about the way in which the financial maladministration at the school was brought to the attention of the Hong Kong Education Department. It is true that the teachers approached the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) about the way the school was being run in February 1977. ICAC's investigation failed to establish any firm evidence of corruption, but did suggest that there was maladministration at the school. Since all information passed to ICAC is treated in the strictest confidence, the Commission could not pass on to the Education Department the evidence they discovered except with the consent of the teachers who had first raised the subject with them. This consent was not given, and the information was not therefore passed to the Education Department. It remains true therefore, that not- withstanding the teachers' earlier approach to ICAC, the first that the Education Department learnt about the financial maladministration at the school was when the school's Manage- ment Committee approached them several days before the teachers sent their own memorandum to the Department on 22 April 1977.
/I am
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