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A10
10.
(b) to provide in government and aided primary
schools, and to encourage the provision in
private primary schools, of an additional one
year and, later on, an additional two years, of
secondary education in Special Forms I and II
for those pupils who were unable to gain admission
to full secondary courses and who wished to remain
at school until they reached the then statutory
minimum age for industrial employment (age 14);
(c) to provide in government, aided and selected
private schools secondary education to School
Certificate (i.e. Form/Middle V) level for about
15 per cent of all pupils who completed the primary
school courses; and to encourage voluntary and
private agencies to supplement this provision.
Free sites, capital grants and interest-free loans
for school building, as well as limited help towards
meeting recurrent expenditure, were made available
for non-profit-making organisations. Sites restricted
to school use were made available for purchase by
profit-making organisations.
In assessing the current position the 1965 White Paper
noted that in terms of primary school places in the territory as a
whole the objective stated in (c) above had very nearly been achieved;
but, with the large-scale resettlement and redevelopment then proceeding,
some areas were better provided with school places than others. Until
recently more than half the available places had been in private schools.
Special Form I had not proved popular: in 1964 only 2,653 pupils had been
admitted to Special Form I and in 1965 only 1,902 had been admitted. In
1965, 18.3 per cent of children leaving primary schools were admitted to