15th August, 1949.
31
The Director of Education, Education Department,
Hong Kong.
1. I have received your letter No. ED8129/49 of August 3rd. but I regret I must again say that this letter is not in a
form which I can put before the Councils whose case I represent- ed in London, because it does not comply with the decision taken there and your undertaking to find a way within the framework of the existing Code to meet the objections of the Anglican School Councils to this Code.
The proposals you make in this letter, and your letter of April 15th meet one of their objections, but not the other.
Your proposal for a Block grant for "Other Charges" provides for the saving of time of the Heads of Schools, as well as of your department and the P.W.D. As I have already written I believe this to be a wise and fair way of meeting our objections on this point. I regret however that I cannot let pass without comment the words "very generous Block Grant" in paragraph 1 of your letter of August 3rd 1949. The proposed Block Grant is very fairly calculated to meet what in fact has been found to be the probable expenditure under this head. In any one year it may be a little less or it may be a little more than the school would receive under the present closely calculated and supervised system. If therefore the words "very generous" is intended to mean that it is generous of Government to allow responsible citizens who are school mana- gers to spend a grant for practical matters like chairs, desks, black-boards etc., unsupervised by Government departments I can only take the strongest exception to that new point. It is in fact contradictory to the whole tenure of the Colonial Office directive No. 477 of May 1930 - on "Grants by Government in aid of certain kinds of educational institutions".
11. But the proposals you make in regard to any addition- al school charges do not meet the major objection of the Grant Schools, namely that freedom of managers necessitates their determining charges and having a margin at their disposal.
(Note. The Roman Catholic schools have only accepted the Code because in response to our joint representations in regard to salaries of missionary teachers, you agreed that there should be full salaries. This concession does in fact give to the Roman Schools a very considerable margin because their schools are run by celibate teaching orders).
The request I took to London was based on the right of the Managers, who founded and built the Schools, to retain their essential freedom and initiative. This must involve