TNAG-0437-FCO40-502-Visits-of-UK-officials-to-Hong-Kong-1974 — Page 25

- 2 -

5.

In 1973 separate departments were set up for:

Building and Surveying

Civil and Structural Engineering

Production and Industrial Engineering

Mechanical and Marine Engineering

Business Studies

Accounting and Management Languages

6. These departments provide full-time courses leading to the Polytechnic's own Higher and Ordinary Diplomas and to Membership examinations of British professional institutions.

7. After preliminary discussions with the Director, whom I knew personally as he had previously been the Chairman of our City and Guilds Advisory Committee on Mechanical Engineering, a short meeting was held with the Directing Staff of the Polytechnic. We discussed numerous topics but there was a considerable interest in the work of the Technician Education Council in the U.K. I gave as much information as I could of the work of this organisation and explained that it had not yet decided on its activities, if any, in overseas countries. The Polytechnic is seeking to make arrangements to co-operate with the Loughborough University of Technology if that University succeeds in setting up a special Centre for the Teaching of Technology Overseas and a member of the Loughborough Centre of Industrial Studies, Mr. D. J. Billau, was at the Polytechnic at the time of my visit to advise on the setting up of new laboratories and workshops.

8. We briefly touched on the suggestion that the City and Guilds might offer a course in Supervisory Studies for overseas countries and I gained the impression that the Associate Director of Commerce and Management was not enamoured with National Examinations Board in Supervisory Studies schemes which he felt were inflexible and did not cater for the experienced supervisor who was not good at expressing himself in writing. As any City and Guilds scheme would by its nature be likely to be less flexible than N.E.B.S.S., I felt that this did not auger well for the offering of a City and Guilds scheme at the Polytechnic.

9. After the meeting with the Directors I was invited to talk to a meeting of the Academic Committee consisting of the Heads and their Deputies of all the departments in the Polytechnic. Again, they were most interested to hear of the development of the Technician Education Council and the Business Education Council and I again gave as much information as I could. I also explained the work which the Institute was doing to help developing countries set up their own technical examining organisations.

10. Considering the number of candidates that City and Guilds gets for its examinations from Hong Kong, I was a little surprised at the general lack of knowledge by the staff of City and Guilds work. I think the Director too was a little surprised. I suspect that the staff has been concentrating on the development of Diploma courses and might possibly have forgotten that there is still a large demand for industrial-type technicians in Hong Kong which will need to be filled for some time by the Polytechnic until the Technical Institutes are built and are functioning.