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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
MRS. E. ELLIOTT (in English):-Mr. Chairman, perhaps a better name for this yearly series of meetings would be "Urban Council Annual Farce", since the result of our debates is always a foregone conclusion, and we have scarcely a subject under our jurisdiction to debate.
I will begin with a conventional subject, LIBRARIES. During the year our committee reverted to our original programme of providing full-scale libraries in all heavily populated areas, instead of the stop-gap mini and branch libraries proposed during the industrial recession. This year we opened a library in Sham Shui Po, a mini-library in the Western District, diverted a mobile library in North Kowloon, and planned a new mobile library for Hong Kong. We are expanding our music listening service by setting up two more centres, and are introducing a pilot video-cassette service. Within the next few years, we should have completed our planned libraries, and will be launching out into additional services, for the aged, handicapped and others.
Our Libraries Select Committee is a happy one, and I believe it is doing a worthwhile job for the community. But I must give credit where due, and a great deal of this credit must go to the librarians and their staff, whom I now take the opportunity to thank for their enthusiasm, planning, and foresight.
One thing about which my committee is not happy is the study room situation. Study rooms for students living in the overcrowded conditions that prevail in Hong Kong are a vital necessity, and it has now been acknowledged that responsibility for study rooms lies with the Education Department. The pressures on our libraries at examination times are unacceptable, but I am glad to see a glimmer of light. It seems that the Education Department is now approaching schools requesting them to lend their buildings for study rooms at night, and I welcome this move, as I am sure it will be welcomed by the community at large. However, I must point out that students need study rooms in the daytime as well as in the evenings, and provision of study rooms must be made now for the expanded programme giving universal education to the age of fifteen. The education programme can only succeed if the children have places to study quietly. I propose that urgent action be taken to solve this problem.
While on the subject of EDUCATION, I should like to say a few words on the Green Paper on Senior and Tertiary Education.
The proposal to provide secondary education for all children up to the age of fifteen is welcome, though it comes years too late. One gets the impression on reading it that it is a hastily-made plan without much in-depth study of all the ramifications. For example, there
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seems to be no justification for excluding from the higher forms all students who fail to pass at Form 3 level, regardless of the parents' wishes to pay for their education. The children so excluded will not even be able to go to independent private schools, if the recommendations of the Green Paper are implemented, since it is clear that the Government, having made use of these private schools, intends to discard them like old rags, as the Government has so often done when it ceases to need voluntary bodies. I hope the Government will have further thoughts about this.
Almost all schools recognised by the Government as satisfactory therefore will be fully or partially subsidized, and will have to conform to the plan to cut off education at Form 3 for 50% of their students. Those schools which have a high proportion of lower grade students will fare even worse, because their Form 4 and 5 places will be taken up with students from other schools with more than 50% passes at Form 3 level. Some schools will therefore be cut in halves, with many students weeded out at Form 4 and others grafted in; this is scarcely educational, and will certainly be demoralising for the students involved in the process.
As to the proposed Junior Certificate of Education at Form 3, no one seems to agree with this and it should be quietly forgotten. There are other ways for students to prove they have studied to Form 3, without introducing an examination that will overcloud the lives of junior secondary school children.
It is to be hoped that all educationalists will read and comment on the Green Paper in no uncertain tones, for modifications must be made.
Hawkers
A Member of this Council recently remarked publicly that I had been a member of the hawker policy committee for many years, and that I was therefore somehow to blame if policies were wrong. What he failed to mention publicly was that no matter what policies I propose, I am sure to be defeated by a large majority, including the member who made this criticism. To change policy one needs a majority, and the majority on this Council will always vote for measures proposed by the Department, which in my opinion runs away from its hawker problems but never tackles them. Having failed to propose anything constructive, the Department, backed by a majority on this Council, is now using the Judiciary to do its negative work. One magistrate, incensed by this attitude, advocated what I have been
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