Council for National Academic Awards
Confidential
CONFIDENTIAL
C
President: HRH The Prince of Wales KG, KT, PC, GCB
Chairman: Sir Denis Rooke CBE, FRS, FEng
Chief Officer: Edwin Keer BSc/PhD, DUniv.
344-354 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8BP Telephone: 01-278 4411
From the Chief Officer:
Edwin Kerr BSc, PhD, DUniv.
C Haye Esq.,
Director of Education,
Department of Education, Hong Kong.
Air Mail
CINAA
Date
Your Reference
Our Reference
18th March 1981 .
BBO/EK/ajg
Dear Colvyn,
Thank you for your letter dated 26th January. I am sorry for the delay in replying to this; firstly my colleagues have been much occupied with the reports which follow from our visit which have needed attention in parallel with their regular work; secondly, I saw merit in seeking the views of the members of the special Hong Kong Sub-Committee which we set up to monitor the whole exercise: this consists of members drawn in part from those who came to Hong Kong but also from very experienced members who would be likely to be in a position to comment more objectively on the conclusions we have reached.
During our deliberations in Hong Kong, we worked essentially to the questions which derive from the White Paper as to comparability with specified courses in the Hong Kong Polytechnic; thus your question (i) is a new question, although we are able to go some way towards answering i(a), but both i(a) and i(b) are inextricably linked with the policies you expect to pursue in the light of our report, and do not have simple answers which we can set down in a definitive form at this stage.
Our
You will, of course, realise that, except for the overall report which Bryan Overy has now written to pull the whole exercise together, the reports as a whole reached an advanced stage of drafting during our stay in Hong Kong. members knew to some extent that they had to give the time to it while they were assembled and able to interact effectively. Of course time has since gone into polishing the reports and copies were despatched to you on March 16th, but the essential framework was laid in our second week at Lee Gardens. Thus the questions, in the particular form in which you have asked them, reached us at a time when the framework of our judgements was already set. Also, while your questions are very direct, and in that sense both refreshing and challenging, it has been necessary in our reports to "unpack" a question such as your (iv) and to approach it from various directions to present an adequate picture of the comparability of the courses.
Confining ourselves, of course, to Baptist College, and having considered the questions in our Hong Kong Sub-Committee and among ourselves as officers, we believe that the reports contain adequate responses to your, (iii) and (iv).
27 MAR 1981
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SAFE ARE REG. EDUCATION DEPT.