CO129-583-12 Comments of Annual Report for Education [1940] 10-2-1941 - 10-9-1941 — Page 5

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Comments received from Mr. Burney on 10.9.41.

Hong Kong, 1939.

(a) It is satisfactory to note that the Hong Kong School Certificate has become, as it should be, the principal leaving exam. There are still rather too many pupils attempting without suc- cess to matricula te (Gen. Table VI.)

(b) A comparison of General Tables

I and II shews that a very large proportion of all the pupils under instruction are in "Other Institutions" - not maintained or aided by Government, but said to be "inspected" (nearly all of them). Unless "inspection" means something much more effective than it used to mean or is likely to mean with only 4 Chinese Inspectors - each with many other duties for 972 institutions, the only result of this can be that education outside the realm of maintained or aided institutions remains some- thing of a rather insanitary farce. Inspection in many ins tances meant, I think, little more than a glance at a register (if kept) and a sniff, hasty, without reason, at the drains.

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(c) Table VII still shows a regrettably high proportion of untrained non-gradua te teachers.

(a) Table IIIA still shows a formidable amount of retardation; Class 3, for example, has a grotesque age-spread.

The re are important signs of improvement in education as a whole, particularly in physical education (pp. 18-19), and in the subjects and activities mentioned in the first paragraph of p.5.