TNAG-0101-FCO40-137-Visits-from-members-of-the-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1987 — Page 13

argument is that Hong Kong cannot afford free primary education at the present time and continue to provide on an increasing scale for the needs of secondary and

technical education. Dr. Chung was not the only member to raise this question in the Budget Debate. Mrs. Ellen Li also urged this very strongly, arguing the need for an imaginative gesture at this time and also that the system of fee remission was regarded by the Chinese community as degrading, leading parents to resort to the system of education by rotation (1.8. one child goes to school at a time) rather than applying for assistance.

We have been unable to trace any recent estimates

of the cost of free primary education to Hong Kong but,

in our view, it is undoubtedly true that it would be such as to prejudice the much needed programme of development in other fields of education.

(d) There is a need for more vocational or pre-vocational

training.

(e) The growth in size and complexity of Hong Kong industry

and the unsatisfactory development of technical education has left a serious shortage of mid-level technical

personnel.

When the Minister was in Hong Kong last year he

discussed with the Governor the possibility of establishing a polytechnic or higher technical institute perhaps as a joint project with U.K. assistance. The position is that we are awaiting the Governor's proposals on this. This is not known outside official circles in Hong Kong and, since in the prevailing economic climate the prospects that such a project would get off the ground are so slight, it would, we think, be unwise to give it any publicity.

(r) The Government should review the education system to provide for the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University to conduct a common, bi-lingual entrance examination for both streams of candidates for university education, i.e. those from the Anglo-Chinese Secondary Schools and the Secondary Technical Schools on the one hand and from the Chinese Secondary Schools

on the other.