(original wo (1) 054234
3810.
Extract from a letter from Colonel T.R. Rowell, Civil Affairs Administration, Central Executive Branch, Post Office Building Hong Kong, addressed to Mr. C.W.M. Cox, Colonial Office, dated
21st January, 1946.
for
To recapitulate briefly my two previous
communications, we found on arrival that there were some 800 children in school, that school buildings, particularly Government, were in a very bad state; that seven of the big schools, including Central British, had been occupied by the Services and that there was a great shortage of school furniture and text-books. I am enclosing with this copies of previous letters so that I need not go further.
We have gradually been building up the school attendance and have been using Government teachers in all types of schools. As the same time we have been registering private schools, and at the present date there are about 22,000 children receiving education of one kind or another. We could double this number in a month if we hud the buildings and the furniture. #ith regard to the latter, desks or tables and chairs are being made locally at the rate of about 1,000 a month.
In the case of buildings I have conducted a pitched battle with the Services and have now succeeded in obtaining possession of Yaumati Government School, Heep Yunn Vernaclar Grant School und St. Joseph's English Grant School. I have also been promised the Diocesan Boys' School (in use as a hospital for Japanese Frisoners of War) at the end of this month and am now fighting for the release of Central British School by September.
La Salle College has been made into a 600-bed hospital and it appears likely to remain as such for an indefinite period. Coupled with the loss of King's College, Queen's College, Gap Road School and Belilios Girl's School, the future of Government secondary education in English, depends upon the acquisition of buildings and it is proposed to establish such a Government School in the Diocesan Boys' School building.
The Girls' Secondary School (Government) has been housed temporarily in the Northcote Training College building and hus at present about 500 students. These will move into the Ellis Kadoorie School as soon as repairs to that building have been carried out. This is scheduled for the 1st of February when the Northcote Training College will open in its own premises. Mr. C.H. Cheng, who was the Senior Chinese lecturer, will act as Principal for the time being with a staff mainly composed of Chinese lecturers who were on the staff in 1941.
With regard to courses at the Training College, there will be two first year Vernacular schools and a small first year English class. There will be no second year until May. Those students who, in December 1941, were at the end of the first term of their second year are now teaching in the various Government and Grant schools and, subject to a satisfactory report from the Heads of these schools and observation of their teaching, they will, after an intensive course of six weeks at the Northcote Training College, be given their teaching certificates without further examination. I am sure that such a procedure will not in any way lower the standard previously set up by the Northcote Training College, since it had been my practice to weed out all those who were obviously unsuited to the teaching profession either on the ground of temperament or