3
5.
Some three years ago
-
I think that it was in 1925
The
Government Government started a Middle Vernacular School. object of this school was to combine with a special study of Chinese S practical study of English especially translation from English into Chinese and vice versa. The University was not consulted about the establishment of this school but hopes were held out in public that the school course successfully completed, would lead on to an advanced course in Chinese and English provided by the University. The existence of this school as a possible feeder
of the University's Chinese Classes was kept in view by various committees which have since been engaged in drafting syllabi and regulations for possible classes and in 1926 there came before the Senate a proposal that the admission test of students who
ished to enter into the Chinese Faculty should be a specially prescribed examination in Chinese, the other subjects required for metricule tion being according to the standard of the Junior Local Examination. This proposal met with considerable opposition in the Senate;, that body was in fact not prepared to go further than that the University would undertake to conduct for the Education Department at the end of 1927 a special school final examination 1or the Goverment Middle Vernacular School. Candidates who did
not come from the Government Vernacular Middle School wore to be
admitted to this examination and the Examiners were to be asked.
to report, on the results of this examination, on the capacity of the students to take up a course which a University might
reasonably be called upon to undertake. It is to be noted that
the Senate's attitude torards the proposal to admit to the Univer- sity students on the strength of a special test in Chinese and a
tust in English and other subjects at the Junior Local standard
Was based on the assumption that such courses would admit students to courses which would load to a University degree.
6.
The first final cxamination of the Government Vernacular
School has now been hold and I attach a report by Ir. Wells on the
P.T.O.
75