59
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Pope Hennessy. This was the Normal School, which was opened in Queen's Road East, Wanchai, on 12th September, 1881, under the headmastership of A.J. May, previously Acting Third Master at the Central School. Partly because Hennessy had not taken the precaution of gaining the prior approval of the Colonial Office in London, and partly because several members of the Education Commission then sitting to consider the elevation of the Central School to collegiate status were unconvinced of the necessity for separate provision of teacher education, the scheme failed. On the recommendation of Dr. George Bateson Wright, the Acting Inspector of Schools who, as Headmaster of the Central School, was normally in a state of dispute with the substantive Inspector, E.J. Eitel, the Wanchai Normal School was closed in October 1883. A.J. May returned to his ordinary teaching duties at the Central School, at first as merely an “extra-master” and, according to Gwenneth Stokes, “always very much on his dignity.”
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And of the original 1881 intake of ten students, only two eventually became teachers. Meanwhile, the failure of the Normal School project led to a resumption of the pupil teacher scheme at the Central School. To avoid the problems faced earlier, first by Stewart and then by May, the revised pupil-teacher scheme gained additional stability by the requirement that each pupil-teacher articled had to deposit $100 with the Government Treasury. Further progress in the field of teacher education in Hong Kong was slow, the next major step being the establishment of “evening extension courses” in 1906, the formalization of these under the aegis of the newly established Technical Institute in 1907, the running of teacher education courses as a part of the Arts Faculty curriculum at the University of Hong Kong from 1916 onwards, and, finally, the establishment of the first permanent training college for teachers in Hong Kong in 1939.
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Although the Normal School was shortlived and made only a minimal contribution to the teaching supply of Hong Kong schools, it was an interesting experiment. Comparable British colonies in Asia, the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States launched no such experiment to supply teachers capable of using English as the medium of instruction. Instead, for these colonies, a Select Committee of 1870 recommended reliance on