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Cost of living has gone up tremendously in recent years. The Staff is paid on a scale fixed in 1921 and the salaries are about half those paid in Government Schools, and less than half in present circumstances.
Fees in all classes at the Diocesan School have been increased, in the last ten years, approximately forty per cent for Day Boys and fifty-five per cent for Boarders. The fees at Government Schools remain the same except that only recently the Government Schools increased the fees in their three senior classes, but not in other classes. A list of fees charged at schools in Hong Kong appeared in the articles on Education in Hong Kong published in the Hong Kong Daily Press in May and October 1930.
Attention is drawn to the above mentioned articles on education which dealt with all aspects of the question.
During the last ten years the cost, to the Colony, of education in Government Schools has increased tremendously owing to the large amounts of money spent on buildings, equipment, and on an increased British Staff. There has been a very large further increase in the cost due to the fall in silver. A pioneer school like the Diocesan School has received no increased grants and no compensation for loss on exchange or to enable it to pay its staff at more than ten dollars to the pound.
The School receives no financial support from England; it is under no Missionary Society. It is a Church of England school in a British Colony; the controlling authority is a local Committee of which the Bishop of the Diocese of Victoria, Hong Kong, is ex- officio Chairman.
The Committee have asked the Government for financial help and for a new system of Grants based on Cost; they have said that they must close the School and Orphanage if more regular support is not forthcoming. Temporarily the Government has waived the interest
on the loan.
The Committee presses for a change in the system of Annual Grants from that by Capitation to one based on Cost, and, especially so, because the Government has no Secondary School for Chinese on the mainland.
The school has done pioneer work in the Colony and in the Far East for over sixty years, in education, work, games, and in general influence.
Boys come to the school from the following places:- North China, Hankow, Shanghai, Foochow, Amoy, Swatow, Wuchow, Canton, Hoihow, Singapore, Bangkok, Manila, Kobe, Formosa, Macao, Haiphong, Saigon, from all parts of the Colony of Hong Kong and from several places up country. Chinese boys come from all parts of the world; in recent years boys have come from North and South America, Australia, South Africa and from several European countries.
Of the scholars about seventy per cent are Chinese and the remainder of various nationalities; on one occasion there were no less than thirteen nationalities represented in the school.
All boys learn Chinese as well as English, and the fact that
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