Pre-Appren- ticeship &
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a school would be of great advantage to the industry, provided always that the effect of the school were not to divert boys from the industry.
87. Our Chairman subsequently arranged to meet the heads of some of the leading Chinese contractors firms and to talk over the matter with them. At the first of these interviews it was explained to the contractors that there were employed in the Colony a larger number of workers in various industries of which the building industry was probably the largest. What the Committee wanted to find out was how far by means of instruction given in schools and evening classes the general standard of intelligence and capacity of the workers could be improved. The first question put to them was whether if a school were established those boys who were going to work in the industry in its various branches would avail themselves of it?
88. The Contractors explained, to start with, that the great majority of the workers in the building industry come from the country and that they begin by passing through a three years apprenticeship; that the apprenticeship ends in no definite test but that after this period the apprentices become generally recognized as day workers. So far as a pre-apprenticeship school is concerned the contractors felt that it would be defficult for boys who are going to become workers in the building industry to join such a school. To do so it would be necessary for them to come from their villages to Hong Kong and there would be in that event nowhere for them to live nor would they be able to pay the fees, were such levied. The Contractors admitted that most of the workers had had no education whatever. A few of them had spent short periods in vernacular private schools. The Con- tractors also explained that boys were taken on as apprentices at varying ages some, though they were in the minority, as early as 13, others at the ages of 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18.
89. When our Chairman put it to the Contractors that while it was not, of course, considered possible that all or even a considerable proportion of the building industry would, to start with at any rate, go to a special school for apprentices before they started work or even attend evening classes while serving as appren- tices, it was thought to be not impossible that those advantages might be regarded as within the reach of a few and that these few having had the advantages of educa- tion might be presumed to be more intelligent and likely to qualify as foremen, they still seemed sceptical. When however our Chairman put it to the Contractors, whether, if evening classes in which English and Chinese and such subjects as simple calculations were taught could be organized they would be welcome, they immediately replied that such classes would be a great boon, as they were already spending money on having their apprentices taught by private teachers.
90. About a month later, our Chairman had a second meeting with the same contractors. At this meeting the Contractors having in the interim consulted the guilds, welcomed the suggestion which the Chairman had previously outlined. They said that there were already some boys who had left primary vernacular schools and were awaiting their apprenticeships and who were undergoing some form of instruction mainly, if not wholly, in private proprietary schools, in English. The Contractors were therefore in favour of a school which could take boys who were awaiting their apprenticeships in the building industry and give them appropriate in- struction. They thought that English was very important, as also were simple arithmetical calculations directed towards the work they would do as workers in the building industry. They seemed to think it would not be necessary for the boys to continue their Chinese in such a school but they hoped that the future apprentices of the building industry would learn in it the rudiments of their craft, e.g. carpentry, bricklaying, plumbing, etc. The Contractors welcomed the idea of evening classes for actual apprentices. They seemed to have realized the urgent need for more intelligent and more capable workers.
91. Pre-apprenticeship training for the building industry is rather a special Evening feature of the Junior Technical Schools in and near London. The general character Courses for of a building trade Junior Technical School in England may be inferred from the
following curriculum :-
the Building
Trade in
English Technical Schools.