provision made for them by Government to furnish their children with an ordinary Chinese education. The mass of the Chinese lower classes do not yet sufficiently appreciate an English education, because their necessities demand Chinese rather than English knowledge. But the well-to-do classes of the Chinese community are now from year to year becoming more alive to the advantages of an English education (based on 3 or 4 years previous study of the Chinese classics) and the existing educational machinery is quite capable of any modification that may be required in order to keep pace with the gradually increasing demand for a higher and broader standard of school teaching. One great charac- teristic of our educational system is that, being the outcome of a slow but natural process of evolution, it is not only ia vital sympathy with all the constituent elements of our heterogeneous community, equitably representing the various factors of differentiation, but it represents also a mighty force of unification. In social life and even in commercial life we have in this Colony sundry unbridged chasms, widely separating the different strata of the community, and this exclusivism seeks algo to secure se- parate Schools for separate classes of society, but the main current of the educational movement in the Colony runs so strongly in the direction of unity that the Schools of the Colony are either forced to abandon their exclusivism or to eke out a scanty existence by constant appeals to the charity of a small section of the community. The Government Central School, the largest and most flourishing educational institution in the Colony, was originally established for Chinese only but was soon compelled by the sheer force of circumstances to admit all other nationalities, and here we see now all the strata of Colonial society brought together in a harmonious co-operation which has (to a certain extent) a unifying effect on society itself. St. Joseph's College, originally established exclusively for Portuguese boys, soon found itself compelled to admit also Chinese boys, who were at first taught in entire separation from the Portuguese, but this partition wall had also to be lowered after some years, and now we see in the upper classes of St. Joseph's College Portuguese and Chinese harmoniously intermixed. Even the Hongkong Public School, established on a strictly exclusivist principle, being intended for Euro- pean Protestants only, found itself compelled to open its doors also to Portuguese, Jews and Mahome- dans. The writer of the article on Hongkong, in the book published under the title "Her Majesty's Colonies," concludes a fair sketch of the educational system of Hongkong (reprinted in a recent work entitled The Schools of Greater Britain"), by saying that this system is very well adapted to the views of the Chinese inhabitants, as a great element in popularising British rule and inducing respect- able Chinese to settle in the Colony." What our educational system has thus done for the Chinese, it is also doing for all the other nationalities represented in the Colony, by striving to remove all unnatural distinctious of race and creed and to bridge over every chasm and gulf that divides one class of society from the other, in order to unite all in mutual subservience to the interests of the common weal.
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9. In one respect most of our educational agencies are labouring under a serious disadvantage. The question of accommodation seriously affects the results of school teaching in every country, and more particularly so in a tropical climate. Yet in this very matter of house accommodation most of the Schools in the Colony are in a very backward condition. Among our 204 Schools there are hardly ten or twelve which are located in suitable premises. The vast majority of our Schools are at présent accommodated in ordinary semi-Chinese or Chinese dwelling houses, ill suited for the purpose of class rooms and are in most cases deficient as regards light and ventilation and especially in respect of lavatories. Even the Government Schools, with the exception of four, are all more or less badly housed, being located in narrow tenements of Chinese construction which were originally built for Chinese domestic purposes and for which the Government pays a heavy monthly rent. The Grant-in-Aid Schools are, with a few exceptions, in the same plight. The Aided Schools in the Villages are mostly accommodated in window-less cottages, generally of a worse type than the dwellings of the villagers themselves, many of these Schools receiving light and ventilation exclusively from the open door-way. There is therefore great need for improvement in the matter of school accommodation. But at present there is little prospect of an early change for the better. House rent has risen enormously in the main parts of the town. All new houses, that have been built of late, arc of smaller dimensions than the old houses of the town. Houses containing rooms suitable for the purposes of a School bave of late become very rare in the Colony. The Government and private Managers of Schools are thus being forced to face the problem of providing school accommoda- tion of a suitable and sanitary type. The Grant-in-Aid Scheme offers indeed Building Grants under certain conditions and one very fine College (St. Joseph's) has been built with such aid, but Managers of Grant-in-Aid Schools appear to consider the restrictions with which Building Grants are hedged in too irksome still, although these restrictions have lately been modified to meet some objections. The Government has also lately made several grants of building sites for Village Schools, but in the thickly populated parts of the town there is a lamentable dearth of available sites suitable for Schools. The sanitary supervision of Public Schools which, under the Grant-in-Aid Scheme, devolved hitherto upon the Inspector of Schools, has at my request been entrusted, since 1887, to the care of the Sanitary Board, a measure of some importance as, in the case of an outbreak of epidemic disease, Schools serve as powerful centres for the propagation of the infection.
10. The results of the annual examinations of the Schools under the supervision of the Govern- ment will be found detailed in Table X-XV appended to this Report, and as far as the Government Central School is concerned, in the Report of its Headmaster. A few supplementary statistical details
and general observations regarding the principal classes of Schools may however be of interest.