1904-1919
HONG KONG, 1908.
III.-LEGISLATION.
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Twenty-two Ordinances were passed during 1908, of which nine were amendment Ordinances. A Fire Insurance Companies Ordinance (No. 3) was passed to authorise the removal of fire insurance companies from the Register of Companies in certain cases. Ordinances were also passed to enable foreign corporations to acquire and hold land in the Colony (No. 7); to provide for the grant of brewery licences (No. 8); to empower a magistrate to hold a Small Debts Court in the New Territories (No. 22); to provide for the registration of chemists and druggists and to regulate the sale of poisons (No. 12); to regulate theatres and other places of public resort (more especially in regard to precautions against fire) (No. 18); and to transfer the Widows' and Orphans' Pension Fund and its management to the Government of Hong Kong (No. 15).
IV.-EDUCATION.
There are 73 Government and Grant Schools, the most important of which is Queen's College. Of these 23 are upper grade schools with a staff competent to give instruction in all subjects of the seventh standard and above. These latter schools have an average attendance of 3,992, and the medium of instruction in all of them, with the exception of one girls' school, is English. The 50 remaining schools are all lower grade. They comprise one school for British Indians where English and Urdu are taught; five Government and one Grant Anglo-Chinese schools; and 43 Grant Vernacular schools. The average attendance at all these lower grade schools is 2,186. The total average daily attendance at both grades of school is 6,178.
The revenue derived from school fees is $54,792 (of which $31,073 is from Queen's College), and is rapidly increasing. This is mainly to be accounted for by the increasing numbers of Chinese desirous of an English education.
Higher education is represented by the Technical Institute, where instruction is given in the evening in mathematics, machine drawing, building construction, field surveying, and allied subjects; in chemistry and physics; in the English and French languages, book-keeping, and shorthand. There is also a teachers' class, at which the junior Chinese masters of Government schools are expected to attend. The Institute is furnished with a well-equipped laboratory. The lecturers are chiefly Civil Servants recruited from the European staffs of Queen's College and the Public Works Department. These officers receive fees for their services.
Hong Kong is fortunate in including among its schools two limited to children of British parentage. Both these schools (one for boys, the other for girls) are under the Government. In 1908 the combined average attendance at them was 87. As might be expected, they have a strong patriotic bias; they are supporters of the Empire League, and the boys' school provides a small but efficient cadet corps.