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Hong Kong Annual Administration Reports, 1841-1941
PAPERS RELATING TO
the other hand how essential this laborious junk population is to the transit of goods and the ordinary commercial operations, upon which the prosperity of Hong Kong depends, I ventured to suggest that the breakwater should be built at the cost of the public. I submitted the plans and estimates to Her Majesty's Government in November 1877. Sir Michael Hicks Beach authorised me to begin the work in 1878, but the Survey Department having avowed its inability to undertake any special work of this kind until the repairs of the Praya Wall were finished, it was only this year that the work was taken in hand by the Acting Surveyor-General.
21. The breakwater is now being constructed in Causeway Bay, a part of the harbour selected for the purpose by a Joint Committee of Naval and Colonial officers. It will cost about 16,000l., one half of which will be taken from a special fund, obtained many years ago by the gambling licenses, the other half being a charge on current Revenue.
Education.
22. The accompanying reports for the last two years of the Acting Head Master of the Central Schools and of the Inspector of Schools show what progress has been made of late in education. The state of public instruction in this Colony is not, however, what it should be.
23. No doubt the important changes made in the grant-in-aid scheme by Sir Michael Hicks Beach have given very general satisfaction and removed a grievance under which more than three-fourths of the Christian community suffered, and which I found had prevented the Roman Catholic Bishop, the Church of England Colonial Chaplain, and the Lutheran Pastor of the German community from accepting any share of the public money voted for education. The examinations under the grant-in-aid scheme are held by independent Government examiners in specified subjects (not including religious subjects), but the word "secular" has now been struck out of the scheme, and for the first time, every school in the Colony, whether religious or secular, can obtain a grant. At the same time schools other than "elementary" were also admitted under the scheme.
24. The grant-in-aid scheme is, however, only availed of by the missionary bodies for their schools and one or two small European schools. The Government scheme of education has not done much for the greater number of the community, the Chinese.
25. In the early years of this Colony successive Secretaries of State impressed on Sir Henry Pottinger, Sir John Davis, and other Governors, the primary duty of encouraging schools where the Chinese boys could learn English. Some of my predecessors recognised the National importance of this, and directed English to be taught in every school supported by the Government. For a short time this was done, but on my first inspection of the Government schools I found that the teaching of English had been given up in all of them with one exception. In the principal
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