31st March 1948
Sir,
129
(2)
The Diocesan Boys School,
Hong Kong.
At a meeting on Monday, 8th March 1948 you invited memoranda from Schools on certain proposed amendments to the Grant Code. I have the honour to submit on behalf of the Anglican Grant Schools the following report of a meeting held by them on 22nd March 1948.
2.
I am directed to draw your attention to the Report of the Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies of May 1930, from which the following passages are cited:-
3.
a) Private management is valuable in any system of education because it ensures that variety and play of personality which is important in every educational system.
b) (This) statement of policy does not necessarily imply a close or detailed control of aided educational institutions by the Government.
c) The utmost elasticity in school management and curricula is desirable if education is not to be robbed of all its colour and all the contributions that local circumstances and personality are capable of making. The more freedom that can be given to (the right kind of) managers and teachers the better.
d) What is proposed is an educational grant based on salaries, and not the payment by Government of the salaries of the staff in aided : institutions....The managing bodies....
should
be free to fix the salary of each member of the staff....or to make any such financial arrangements for their staff as may be considered with their ordinary conditions of recruitment.
9
The Code at present provides that the recurrent Grant shall be the difference between approved expenditure and income from school fees. Government therefore has complete control of the approved expenditure, and contrary to 2(d) above, it is Government, not the Managers, which fixes the salary of each member of the staff in the Schools. This is because the recurrent Grant, instead of being. "based on", is "calculated by" salary expenditure.
The Hanagers have, in this department of the Code, lost all freedom of action, and in point of fact they have yielded their freedom here because of the great improvements in the conditions of the Teachers which the Code provides, and because it was never contemplated by them, in the discussions on the form of the new Code which took place shortly before the war with Japan that their freedom to make additional school charges would be questioned.
14.