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A Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong
departments were added. The building was demolished in 1988, seven years after
it had become an annexe of the Morrison Hill Technical Institute. There are
antiquarians in Hong Kong today who feel the building should have been
preserved.
But, retracing our steps, when the Pacific War broke out in 1941, technical education was being provided in Hong Kong at secondary, trade school and post-secondary levels, but on a limited scale. There were about 200 full-time
students attending post-secondary courses at the Trade School, in Wood Road, although the School did not receive a great deal of support from employers, except from the dockyards and members of the then named Building Contractors' Association (now the Hong Kong Construction Association). The latter even erected the Trade School at cost price under the supervision of Mr. Tam Shui Hong, an affable, elderly gentleman I recall. In addition, generous building contractors would sometimes donate a load of bricks or sand for use in practical classes.
Post-Second World War
In 1947, after World War Two was over, the Trade School (in that year
renamed Technical College), the Junior Technical School, the Aberdeen Trade
School and a number of centres running evening classes in technical subjects reopened. They were soon operating at pre-war capacity. To this group were added, in 1953, the Ho Tung Technical School for Girls in Causeway Bay, and Tang King Po Secondary School in Kowloon. For many years the latter also had a trade school section which ran classes in printing, shoemaking and tailoring.
This Section was closed in the late 1970s after more Government
technical institutes and pre-vocational schools were up and running.
My early memories of the old Technical College, in Wood Road Wan Chai in the mid 1950s, are crystal clear: like the views at that time from Hong Kong Island during the winter months over to Kowloon and above and beyond
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