651
32. Class II did very badly. Not one boy attempted all the questions and no boy obtained half marks. The highest mark was 40%. No trouble was apparently taken with the papers and many boys must have finished them well within half an hour though the time allowance was 2 hours. The paper was long but not difficult; it is therefore not easy to account for the poor results.
33. In Class III the results were very much better. Out of 20 papers only 4 obtained less than half marks in A & B. The best paper scored 68 marks out of a possible 90. III C was rather poor. All the papers were tidy and the English was in most cases good. Allowance was made for a few questions not in the syllabus but many boys had no difficulty in answering them.
34. Class IV was disappointing. One boy in A and one in B obtained over half marks, the latter 60%. The papers though not good showed that the subject had been studied withi some care and quite a large number obtained 40% of marks. Many questions were answered incorrectly as boys either did not understand them or had not studied them carefully before writing down the answers. For instance, only very few boys compared the Hoang Ho with the Yang Tse; most of them contented themselves with a brief and somewhat inaccurate account of each. In answer to question 2 on the railways in existence in China at the present time the Canton-Hankow and the Kowloon-Canton Railways were included, and as usual Hongkong and Macao figured as Treaty Ports in answer to question 4.
35. Class V was good. VA did very well. All but one boy obtained over half marks and the highest individual scores were 71 & 64 out of a maximum of 80. Class V B did fairly well, C was bad, D good and E poor.
36. Classes VI & VII were examined orally and appear to have grasped the rudiments of the subject though too great a tendency was shown to learn definitions in set terms.
HISTORY.
37. On the whole the results were not very good. The papers were not difficult but rather long. Many boys who knew something of the subject did not take the trouble to answer more than half the questions with the result that they only scored very few marks. There was again a general tendency (to which attention was drawn last year), to answer one or two questions at quite unnecessary length giving details which were not asked for and to omit questions which could have been answered in half a page at the outside.
38. In Class I A two good papers were shewn up, three were fair and the remaining three were poor.
The paper was ong and somewhat difficult, the general result may there- fore be considered fair. The style of the papers was good. Question 5 on British Industries was only attempted by very few boys. I was distinctly poor, only one boy gaining more than half marks. Many answers were not in the least to the point and showed that the ques- tions had not been carefully studied.
39. Class II did badly. Only one boy out of 20 got over half marks and 4 boys failed to score at all. Due allowance was made for one question which was outside the period: but this particular question was attempted by nearly all the boys, whereas many within the period laid down were not touched. Answers such as "Commonwealth was the natural son of Charles I", a really clever answer but for the fact that the hidden meaning of the phrase was not apparent to the writter, showed that boys had very vague notions of the subject treated.
J
40. Class III was disappointing. The boys knew something of the subject but contented themselves with answering 4 or 5 instead of the whole 8 questions, hence the poorness of the marks. Three boys obtained between 50% and 70% of marks, 9 obtained over 40%, 6 over 30% and only 3 less than 30%.
HYGIENE.
41. This subject was well done in Classes III, IV and V but Classes I and II did badly. In Class I but little trouble was taken in answering questions and in Class II several boys gave the most absurd answers. One example will suffice: In reply to question 2 "Why should lead piping never be used for a water supply ?" more that one boy replied “because