disposal of the Education.
distribution
Department for amongst the Village
Village Schools. Improvement in
6.
School accommodation, which
is cited as a further stimulus
to attendance both in town
and country,
country, will not escape attention.
I have the honour to be,
My Lord, Your Lordship's Most Obedient
Humble Servant;
Gudervere
C
No. 57.
SIR,
Enclosure
HONGKONG.
117
C. O. 4434
MEANS OF STIMULATING THE SCHOOL ATTENDANCE OF CHINESE
CHILDREN.
MEC 8 MAR 2)
EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, HONGKONG, 26th September, 1889.
I have the honour to submit some observations with reference to the remarks made by the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies regarding the need of stimulating the school attendance of Chinese children.
2. The extracts from Secretary of State's Despatch No. 102, of 15 May, 1889, forwarded to me, suggest in the first instance the employment of a regular "School-attendance Officer," and secondly raise the question if "the school attendance might not be stimulated in that or some similar way.'
3. As to the appointment of a regular "School-attendance Officer," who should be a Chinese and who should exercise the functions detailed in the above quoted extracts, I have no doubt but such an office would bring a healthful stimulus to bear upon the school attendance of Chinese children. But I venture to submit for consideration the following suggestions with reference to the carrying out of the Secretary of State's plan.
4. The Secretary of State's desire to employ a special School-attendance Officer is based on my statistics quoted in the Despatch, which statistics are made up by a rough computation of the number of uneducated children, as given in the last of the tables appended to my annual reports. I do not know if the Secretary of State had before his mind, at the time, what I have repeatedly pointed out in the text of former reports, viz., that these computations of the number of uneducated children in the Colony are but a rough approximation, because the last census of the Colony, taken in 1881, did not give the number of children of school-going age then in the Colony, and because the annual increment of increase of the population of the Colony can only be approximately guessed at. But in 1891 the next census is to be taken, and I will make a special recommendation, in a separate document, that on the occasion of this census the number of children of school-going age present in the Colony be ascertained. If the appointment of a separate School-attendance Officer were postponed until the census of 1891 has proved the need of a separate office for this purpose, the following arrangement might in the meantime be made to carry out the wishes of the Secretary of State temporarily.
b. For many years past the successive Registrars General have assisted me in the annual computation of the number of children attending private schools (not under Government inspection). This has been done each time through District Watchmen who visited the private schools in their respective districts and counted the children in attendance. I have consulted the present Acting Registrar General on the subject of the Despatch above quoted, and I think he agrees with me, that the Registrar General, through his official connection with the leading members of the Chinese community, and also through the cognizance he may be authorized to take, to some extent, of that class of Chinese girls that attend school least (the purchased servant girls), and as standing in loco parentis for the kidnapped and rescued Chinese girls, is in a position to devise some scheme under which he might, through the District Watchmen, or otherwise, exercise an influence on the Chinese community such as would go a long way to fulfil the main object for which the Secretary of State wishes a School-attendance Officer to be appointed, until, after the census of 1891, the question as to the need of a separate office for that purpose can be satisfactorily settled.
c. I believe that a determined effort made by the Registrar General's Department, through the leading members of the Chinese community directly, and indirectly through the District Watchmen or otherwise, to urge Chinese parents or guardians and Chinese owners of purchased servant girls to send their children to some school or other, would come home to the Chinese residents with more force and have far more effect than if the same effort were made by the Education Department.
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