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REVIEW
aided secondary schools will enable these schools to bring the total fees charged into line with those applicable in government secondary schools. The higher charges in English schools will mean that recurrent subsidies in schools for Chinese-speaking and English- speaking children will be at the same level. Also included in the white paper were proposals for a revised salary structure for teachers, suited to and applicable throughout a teaching service.
The plans to make primary education more widely and more readily available met with approval, but there was strong opposition to the increased fees in secondary schools. Some sections of the press construed it as an attempt to make the more wealthy members of the population subsidize education for the less wealthy, although all aided education is in fact and remains-heavily subsidized from public funds. There was also widespread criticism of possible cuts in certain sectors of teachers' salaries and of the government's overall budget for education. The debate on education which took place in the Legislative Council was the first full-scale debate on this topic for many years and members voiced their views at length. Although there was much criticism of individual points, members voted to adopt the white paper after a number of modifications had been made and the government's position on the general question of teachers' salaries had been reserved until further examination and consultation had been carried out.
At the higher levels of education the year was remarkable for the number of endowments made available from private sources. To commemorate its centenary, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation announced it was presenting endowments to the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong to bring each an income of $25,000 a year. This would enable five scholarships of $5,000 each to be held at each university at any one time. The bank stated that the object of the endowments was to attract some of the best students entering the universities into a career in social work, thus stimulating the development of effective social welfare services in Hong Kong.
Mr Eric Hotung, a Hong Kong businessman, announced that he was setting up a $1 million trust fund to provide scholarships tenable both locally and abroad. He said the fund would be in- creased by an additional $5 million if the results justified it. Known