18
-
than the corresponding examinations of English Universities, and delay in the publication of results is avoided. The examinations, first held in 1913, are therefore playing an increasingly important part in determining the standard of secondary education and in checking the value of the work done by widely scattered schools. They are now taken to the exclusion of all others by the schools of Hongkong and by the British schools at Hankow and Wachang, and are also held at Shanghai, at Singapore and Penang (for candidates proposing to proceed to the University) and at Semarang, in Java. The total number of candidates entering in December 1921 was 582, being tar in excess of any previous figures.
Present numbers and Position.
In a country in which secondary education is ill- organized the progress of a newly founded University must necessarily be slow, and initial difficulties were materially increased by the outbreak of the world-war within two years of the foundation of the University. The initial endowment fund was also quite inadequate, and here, too, the situation was made more serious by the fall in the value of money. Thanks, mainly, to the financial assistance of the Colonial Government, those diffiulties have been in a large measure overcome, and, owing to a policy of the most rigid economy which in the long run would be fatal to efficiency, the current Budget shews a nominal surplus. Meau- while numbers have shown a sharp rise. The annual number of graduates for the five years from 1916
697