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Kong & Whampoa Dock Co., reports that some of the boys go on with free scholar- ships to the Yaumati District School and that many of the boys who have been pupils of the Lower Primary School near Kowloon Docks find their way into the Company's works as soon as they are able to enter them. The question, what becomes of the boys who get their elementary vernacular education at the Quarry Bay School (they are almost entirely the sons of the Taikoo Dockyard & Engineering Co.'s workers) and the allied question whence come the apprentices of the Taikoo Docks have been carefully investigated. The facts appear to be (1) that a considerable number of the boys who have been pupils in the Company's Quarry Bay School are not finding their way into the apprentice system of the Taikoo Dockyard, and (2) that the boys who actually become apprentices in the Taikoo Dockyard come from a variety of schools (mostly private schools) and that one apprentice has recently been admitted from King's College. The fact that many of the boys who have been pupils of the Company's Quarry Bay School are not finding their way into the Taikoo Dockyard Apprentice System is due to the time which must elapse between their leaving school and the age at which a boy is physically capable to work as an apprentice. That age is not less than 16.
23. In addition to these lower primary schools which, as they give a general and not a technical education, are not strictly within the Committee's purview there is conducted in connection with the Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock Co.'s Yard in Kowloon a night school called the Hop Ying English Evening Free School.
All pupils at this school are employees of the Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock Co. Attendance at this school is not obligatory on the apprentices of the Company, nor is it in fact an institution which the Company either started or is maintaining. The school represents a voluntary effort on the part of the Company's workers and it receives a recurring grant from the Company. There is room in the school for 136 pupils and it is always full. The curriculum of the school includes English (with special refer- ence to the English names for tools and parts of machinery) also drawing and some simple mathematics. The apprentices get away from the works at 5 p.m. The school opens at 7 pm, and closes at 9 p.m. The Headmaster assured our Chairman that it was not the case that the boys are too tired to study intelligently. The school does not meet during the hottest part of the summer.
24. The Taikoo Dockyard started a technical class for apprentices in 1925 but this class was not continued after the general strike in the Colony which took place in that year. This class was reopened in October 1930. When the reopening of this class was being mooted, the firm arranged with the Director of the Technical Institute that the firm would provide the necessary accommodation, furniture, equipment, light, etc., but that the Education Department should pay the teachers, the firm agreeing, to start with, to pay the fees of the apprentices attending the class. The Acting Manager of the Taikoo Docks was, however, subsequently told by the Education Department that no funds were available. Rather than let the op- portunity lapse the firm has for the time being undertaken the remuneration of the teachers and interpreters who work this class. This class is attended by 50 appren- tices. Its curriculum includes arithmetic, mensuration, solid geometry and model drawing. The teaching of these subjects which is in the hands of the members of the Dockyard Staff, is closely connected with the work which the apprentices are actually doing in the shops. The members of the Dockyard Staff are paid for this work at the rate adopted by the Technical Institute.
25. There is also an English class conducted at the Taikoo Docks for the apprentices of the Company. This class was started early last year. The class is conducted by one of the Assistant Masters of King's College, assisted by an inter- preter. Our Chairman visited this class on 3rd December, 1930, and found some 30 apprentices being instructed in it. Our Chairman was favourably impressed by the work of the class but found that some of the apprentices were unable to read the Chinese translations of the simple English sentences set out in the Anglo-Chinese reader which was in use. It transpired that some of the boys start on their apprenticeships practically, if not wholly illiterate. Possibly some of the boys who appear to be illiterate would be found to have spent some time in a Chinese verna- cular school, but whatever capacity to read and write they may have secured there they have apparently lost in the interval between leaving school and starting as apprentices. This class which meets twice a week from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. is organised
―
by the Technical Institute, the teachers being paid out of the funds assigned by the Government to the Institute in the annual Colonial vote for education.
26. The Salesian Institute which maintains this school is an Italian Order which The St. has made it its work to relieve and raise the poor. This the Order attempts to do Louis
Industrial by means of schools which not only give the boys a general elementary education School, but also teach them various trades. The St. Louis Industrial School has on its West Point. rolls 72 small boys who attend as day scholars. These small boys are simply under- going an ordinary vernacular education. The school is partly, but by no means wholly, an institute to which waifs and strays are sent. These waifs and strays are taken in at various ages and they are generally older than the other boys. They are thus organised as a special class for the purposes of general education. The school has four trade departments, viz., a department of shoemaking, which is training 24 boys, a department of tailoring, which is training 18 boys, a department of carpentry, which is training 16 boys and a department of printing which is train- ing 8 boys. All the boys in these trade departments live in the school which has incidentally trained and organised from its pupils a quite effective brass band. The Salesian Institute conducts large and important trade schools in Italy and Germany. Each trade department is in charge of a lay brother who has been trained in one of the Institute's schools in Europe. Each trade departinent is also run on a com- mercial basis. The training given in trade departments is excellent and the school authorities have no difficulty whatever in placing their trained pupils in remunerative employment.
27. With reference to the frequently repeated criticism that the Chinese Chile! system makes a technical training diffiert, if not impossble, it is interesting to note that a boy trained in this school as a carpenter is admitted by the Carpenters' Guild direct on to building work as a wage-earner. The articles produced by these trade departments are distinctly good. Father Kerec assured the Chairman that his Carpentry Department carried out orders for the Furnishing Department of Messrs. Lane, Crawford, Ltd., and that the Manager of that Department was anxious to take his trained boys and to give them regular employment in his furniture shop at good wages. We understand that a Chinese Society for the encouragement of industrial education is now negotiating with the Salesian Order through the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs with a view to getting the Order to work a school for the Com- mittee at Aberdeen. The suggestion is that the Government might hand over the old paper factory for the purpose. This school at Aberdeen will apparently be rather definitely designed for the charitable purposes which the Society has in view. But the Salesian Institute does not propose, even if it takes on this Aberdeen venture, to give up its school at West Point. On the contrary the Institute has decided to rebuild and extend its school at West Point.
III. Higher Technical Education in Hong Kong.
Technical
28. We were considerably assisted in our inquiry by the Report of the The Teclinical Education Committee which was appointed in 1925 by His Excellency the Singapore Governor and High Commissioner to consider the feasibility of industrial and tech- Education nical education in Singapore and the type of classes and institutions required. The Committee, Committee considered the problem under four heads-
(a) Higher Technical Education-leading to the attainment of a college degree and the producing of fully qualified engineers, surveyors and architects;
(b) Intermediate Technical Education of the standard desirable in English clerks of works, assistant surveyors, building and road overseers, ships' engineers, architectural and other draftsmen;
(c) The Education given in trade (or artizan) schools to youths training
to become mechanics and so on.
(d) Industrial Education-where children are taught simple trades such as
carpentry besides ordinary subjects.
1925.
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