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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
CHAIRMAN:-The motion before the Council is:
That this Council should adopt a ward system for Hong Kong and Kowloon and that each ward should be represented by one or more Urban Councillors.
The question was put.
The motion, as amended, was carried, with 21 for, nil against, and 5 abstentions.
(At this point THE SECRETARY FOR Chinese AFFAIRS left the meeting)
(3) MR. H. CHEONG-LEEN moved the following motion:-
Resolved that the Legislative Council be urged to enact suitable legislation to provide for the Director of Education to be a member of the Urban Council.
He said: This motion is not within Section 54 of the Urban Council Ordinance, 1955, and therefore the sanction of the Standing Committee of the Whole Council had first to be obtained in order that it could be debated at to-day's Council meeting. My Civic Association colleagues and I thank the Standing Committee of the Whole Council for their co-operation in this respect.
The Civic Association Elected Members believe that education has a vital relationship to the future of Hong Kong's younger generation. We believe that the people of Hong Kong want Government to have a purposeful plan to achieve compulsory and free primary education within the shortest possible time. It is not enough for Government to say, as it has in the White Paper on Education Policy, that it plans to provide a subsidized place for every child who seeks one by 1971. Government must take a more unequivocal and bolder step than that. We believe that the Government should take steps to introduce some form of compulsory primary education tailored to local requirements, and that those who can afford to pay should do so, and those who cannot should be given free or partially free education. But every child must be sent to primary school even though some parents may object. This requires, of course, the fullest co-operation and support of the private school system. We believe that people in Hong Kong genuinely want to see established the status of Hong Kong citizenship and we must now lay the foundation by giving our children the best possible education that our economy can afford.
Because the Civic Association Elected Members regard education as a matter of top priority-and I am sure that there are other Urban Councillors who feel the same way as we do- we believe that it would be highly beneficial to Hong Kong people if the Director of Education were to be made a member of this Council.
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The Urban Council is the only public body which has elected members who have been elected by the existing franchise to serve the Hong Kong public. And although the Elected Members have been voted into office by a comparatively small franchise, we consider that we have an equal responsibility to serve the interests of those who for the time being do not have the right to vote. I am in no way casting any aspersions on the good work done by Appointed Urban Councillors for whose work in this Council I have the highest regard. (MR. SALES: ---Thank you). But it is because we in the Civic Association feel that the franchise should be expanded in an orderly manner to bear a reasonable relationship to population growth that we do stress the urgent need for Government to expand more rapidly educational facilities in Hong Kong.
It is no secret that the Civic Association had in the past been very critical of the Government's education policies. We had strongly opposed the short-sighted policy of reducing the period of primary education from 6 years to 5 years, which did not permit local children to enter school until they reached the age of seven. We had expressed opposition to the recommendation to double primary school fees. The Director of Education's statement in Legislative Council that all this will not now be pursued by Government does help to allay some of our fears. But we are not yet convinced that Government has gone as far as it should. The proposal by Government to revert progressively back to the previous system of entry at 6 years of age within a period of 4 years is not acceptable. In our opinion, the Education Department should re-examine the possibility of having it done within 2 years. After all, it took the Government only 2 years to create the very problem which it is now proposing to solve within 4 years, by going back to the old system.
We are opposed to the White Paper's recommendation to increase school fees in secondary schools. This will inevitably trigger off a round of increases in private secondary schools, and so long as Government does nothing about regulating the rents of private schools, it stands to reason that the landlords of school premises would naturally want to get their share of the round of increases. This in turn would affect the cost of living and impose further hardship upon white-collar families and the poor in Hong Kong.
We are opposed to Government reducing this year's budget allocation for education from 15% to 13.5% of the Annual Budget. It is a backward and a foolish step, and is a travesty of the right to an education of those Hong Kong children who are unable to go to school, especially when the Government is yearly accumulating fat budget sur-
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