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B. Anglo-Chinese (non-graduate) Teachers.
The only organization for training this type of teacher, from which the staffs of non-Government schools are largely recruited, is the Evening Institute. The Institute provides a three-year course of evening classes which untrained teachers in the Grant-in-Aid Schools attend, many of them after completing (as have also the lecturers) a full day's teaching in their schools. We consider these classes at best a makeshift arrangement which cannot give really adequate training-their fundamental weakness being the lack of practical work under skilled guidance. The Grant schools, and probably private schools also, will for some time to come require a regular supply of non-graduate teachers and the only way of ensuring that such teachers receive adequate training is by providing full-time training at a train- ing college or centre.
We recommend accordingly :
"That, assuming that the grant-in-aid system remains more or less as at present, the evening class system should be discontinued as soon as practicable, and that immediate steps should be taken to replace it by an organization, to be formed as a department of a Government school and staffed jointly by the University and the Education Department, for the training of student teachers, with a two years' practical and general course; that entrants should have reached matriculation standard; and that at the end of the course successful students should be granted Teachers' Certificates by the Government, and that if necessary students taking the course should be subsidized by Government.'
C. Teachers for Rural Vernacular Schools.
The only training facilities at present available to this class of teacher are the Normal School at Taipo which provides a three-year course for men vernacular teachers, and has an annual average output of four or five teachers. The curriculum of the training course has no rural bias. We consider that a much larger supply of trained teachers is necessary if the vernacular schools in the New Territories are to be adequately staffed and are to reach a reasonable standard as centres of education. We realise however that under the existing system the pay and prospects of vernacular teachers are so poor that few students, and those not of the best quality, are likely to be attracted to this career, and we are forced to the conclu- sion that this difficulty can only be overcome by Government accepting greater responsibility for vernacular education, which in the New Territories should have a definitely rural bias.
We recommend accordingly:
"That Government take immediate steps to establish and maintain a new training centre or centres for men and women rural teachers in the New Territories and that the course of training should make a complete break with the past and should conform more closely to the conception. of rural education which prevails in the African colonies and elsewhere.
This proposal is based to a large extent on our view that Government should be prepared to undertake greater responsibility for primary verna- cular education in the New Territories.'
D. Teachers for Urban Vernacular Schools.
At present there are two organizations for the training of this class of teacher (1) Normal Schools and (2) the Evening Institute Classes,
(1) Normal Schools.
There are two normal schools on the island, one for men and one for women. The Vernacular Normal and Middle School, as its name implies, has two functions: