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The alphabet, the lower division deals with elementary leading and the upper division goes on to Secondary education, preparing students for higher education with special care to reach and beyond the standard of the Oxford English Local Examination. Education is taught from 9 am to 4.30 pm, with hours from 6.30 to 8 am and 2.30 to 1.30 pm devoted to Chinese teaching by Chinese masters. This Chinese teaching is attended by all except the helper school and special individuals from the lower grades.
The Upper School is taught higher English subjects in the afternoons from 2.30 to 4.30. The Upper School includes about one-third of the total students. The preparatory and lower school run up to about the Sixth standard of a Board School.
If the college were confined to the work of Secondary education, it would, under existing circumstances, be more than half empty, but with better arrangements, might gradually become more of a Secondary and less of an elementary School, and this, it seems, should be aimed at.
In its elementary stages, it does the same work that is done by government schools outside, but in the latter schools, it is done for nothing, whereas at the college, a fee of $1 is charged. Mr. May suggests that at the outside schools, education above the first two standards should no longer be free, but that a fee should be charged, similar to that of the College.
The result, it may be expected, will be that all the boys above the first two standards will then be more likely to come to the college ahead on the elements, and the College will thus be fed with pupils who will be enabled to study its preparatory division. The College's relation to the other schools is given on a wholly different basis in the colony, with no bonus to teachers, and no grant-in-aid.