Grant
and showing a slight increase over the 1946 figures. schools also showed a slight increase during the year under review, but it is in the subsidized schools and private schools that the most notable increase has been observed. Subsidized schools, which in 1946 catered for only 8,909 pupils, now provide education for 21,410, and private schools show an enrolment of 55,428 as compared with 32,366 in 1946. The last two categories include night schools with enrolments of 1,080 and 12,317 respectively.
Secondary education, while showing some progress during the year, has not revived to the same extent. Although the Government and Grant Schools reached their pre-war enrolment, neither the subsidized nor the private schools have re-established themselves on anything like the same scale. The total result is that, as compared with 37,355 who were receiving secondary education in 1941, there were at the end of the year under review, 16,889 pupils.
Rural education continues to be mainly in the hands of private and subsidized schools, although Government maintains three primary schools, one at Taipo, one at Yuen Long and one on the island of Cheung Chau. Private schools have not yet resumed on anything like the same scale as in 1941 when there were in the rural areas as many as 48 schools; but there are now half as many subsidized schools again as there were in 1941, giving primary education to 12,000 pupils.
A new sphere of education which has been entered since the liberation of the Colony is the education of the children of the fishing community. Even in 1946, considerable progress had been made in this direction but during the year under review the number of schools of this nature provided for the children of fishing folk was increased from four to nine; five of these receive subsidies from the Education Department. In almost all these schools the curriculum is the normal curriculum of the primary vernacular school, but in one, classes of a vocational nature are also conducted. Altogether, 1,031 are enrolled in these schools.
At the end of 1946, it had still not been possible to re-open the Government Trade and Junior Technical schools. The Trade School has now been re-named the Technical College as it was thought to give a better idea of the function it fulfills in the life of the Colony. Evening classes are conducted in connection with the College and at present they include instruction in preliminary engineering and ship-building and in wireless telegraphy. Many of the pupils who attend these classes are apprentices from the Royal Naval, Kowloon and Taikoo Dock- yards.
The Evening Institute which reopened in 1946 now has an .enrolment of over 1,100 students. Classes include instruction in book-keeping, shorthand and English for commercial students, instruction in pharmacy and instruction for the supplementary
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