sir,
The Diocesan Boys School,
Hong Kong.
31st March, 1948.
35
A
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 follow- ing passages are cited:-
(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 arrange- ments for their staff as may be consistent with their ordinary conditions of recruitment.
3. The Code at present provides that the recurrent Grant shall be the diff- erence between approved expenditure and income from school fees, Govern- ment therefore has complete control of the approved expenditure, and con- trary 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" sálary expenditure. The Managers 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.
4. It follows, therefore, that if the Managers are to have any effective freedom and responsibility their right to make school charges at their discretion which are not to be off-set against recurrent expenditure must be left unimpaired, provided that the money is used for the benefit of Schools. Without this managerial freedom, which is essential to variety and initiative, the basic principle of a Grant-in-Aid system is destroyed; the Managers are reduced to figure-heads; and the Grant Schools are as much under Government control as Government Schools.
Article 34 of the Amended Code is therefore not acceptable to the Ang- lican Grant Schools.
5. The Anglican Grant Schools Councils share the Director of Education's concern that the increased cost of Grant-in-Aid Secondary Education should not block needed improvements in primary education. They would point out that the proposed limitation of school charges does nothing to reduce the cost of the Grant Code, and makes it impossible for the Schools to set aside sufficient suas for re-building and approved developments. They are willing to consider amendments to the Code which would reduce the cost to Government of the Grants, provided that such amendments make for the increased freedom and responsibility of the Managers.
6. The whole of the present system whereby grants are made towards the cost of repairs and of new furniture and equipment has the effect of throwing such an intolerable burden of correspondence upon the Heads of Schools that they are distracted from their proper duties. It was the opinion of the meeting that if the present provisions for the claiming of grants for furn- iture and equipment and minor repairs cannot be maintained without the opp- ressive regulations which are now attached to then, a total revision of the