REVIEW
11
and may even be gaining a little. But this assessment can be no more than a general impression in the absence of firm statistical data on which to base a more reliable judgment. A better assess- ment may prove possible after the results of the 1961 Census (planning for which started in the course of the year under review) have been analysed.
Progress in the field of education has been equally impressive. The bare bones of Hong Kong's problem can be stated thus. The main influx of new immigrants came to Hong Kong in 1949 and in the years immediately following. They brought children of all ages with them, but young children predominated. The children born to these_immigrants here have, of course, been growing to- wards primary school age in the ten years which followed. The initial problem was therefore one of providing sufficient primary school places; and in the past ten years the Education Department has concentrated its main efforts on providing these places.
In 1954 the Department launched a seven-year primary school expansion programme aimed at providing 215,000 primary school places by the end of 1961. The active co-operation of the numer- ous bodies interested in education in the Colony is making it possible to achieve this target handsomely. By the beginning of the current school year 152,000 additional primary school places had been provided, and the total number of primary school places available was 363,500. In addition, 207 primary school projects were in hand, and these are expected to produce another 154,000 primary school places by the end of 1961. The original target will thus be exceeded by something like 91,000 places: and there will actually be an excess of about 140,000 places over the estimated number of primary school children by the end of the planning period. This may seem a strange way of planning, but the reasons are not far to seek. The first and most obvious one is that no reliable estimate of the number of children of primary school age is possible until an analysis of the results of the 1961 Census is available, and, until then, the minimum figure of registered births less deaths has to suffice for planning purposes, although an un- known quantity for net immigration should properly be added to this figure. But should an excess of places over pupils actually arise, it will then be possible to return to one sessional-working