15-
-
to the control and disbursement of government funds.
However, most
aided schools are under the control of sponsors that is, religious
and other voluntary bodies (such as the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals,
the Hong Kong Buddhist Association, and the Church of Christ in China),
many of which provide a wide range of community services outside the
field of education. These non-profit-making organisations are an
important element in the provision of education, particularly as they
are required to provide 20 per cent of the capital costs of the aided
schools under their control, the other 80 per cent being provided by
the government.' Many sponsoring bodies have a long history of public
service in Hong Kong, deeply rooted in the earlier development of the
territory, and not unnaturally their schools have developed traditions
in some cases the direct result of their religious
and characteristics
affiliations which are highly regarded by certain sections of the
community. A list of the major sponsoring bodies is appended (appendix 0).
3.24
Many schools are now organised in councils which serve to
promote the educational objectives of their member schools and generally
to protect the interests of their staff and pupils. The oldest of these
is the Grant Schools Council, representing the 22 original grant-in-aid
schools; the largest (in membership) are the Subsidised Primary Schools
Council and the Subsidised Secondary Schools Council. At the secondary
level the names "grant" and "subsidised" reflect the former system
whereby different codes of aid existed for the two groups of school,
and although a unified code and common standards of provision now apply
to the two groups at the secondary level and all of their member schools
are classified as "aided", they prefer to retain their former distinctive
identities. There are several such councils and associations (a complete
list is shown at appendix K), some of them recently established, for both
public-sector and private-sector schools. School authorities find it
* estate schools excepted: see paragraph 2.23