}
conference in the school.
G)
That was the end of the sit-in.
On the same day, the teachers signed the new contracts.
Consequences of the Sit-in
a) Warning letters to teachers
On June 17, when normal classes had already resumed in
the school for a week, warning letters were issued to all 35
teachers by the Director of Education, Mr. Topley, on the ground
that the Director believed that the sit-in would resume the
following week. In the letter, the Director of Education warned
all 35 teachers, including 2 nuns, stating that they were "directly
or indirectly involved with pupils in defiance of the school
authority" and that "any repetition of such behaviour might result
in cancellation of their teachers' registration". On receiving
the warning, the teachers immediately sought help from Mr. Szeto
Wah, President of the Professional Teachers' Union, to lodge
their complaint against the warning. Meanwhile, everything went
on as normal in the school.
On June 20, more than 800 students of the school out of
a total of 900 jointly wrote a letter to the Director of Education,
asking him to withdraw the warning letters to their teachers and
saying that his charges were "trumped-up". The students stressed
in their letter that the teachers had nothing to do with their
sit-in and they "had kept it a secret" because they did not want
anybody to stop them. "We suspect that the department's warning
is possibly calculated to divert public attention from the financial
they pointed out further.
issue,'
b) Dissolution of the Students' Union
On June 20, the last teaching day of the school year,
the school announced that the Students' Union was to be dissolved
because the Education Department considered it an illegal body
since the school had not registered the Students' Union with the
Education Department during the past year.
In fact, there was already a provisional students' body
in 1975. And in October 1976, the Students' Union formally came
into being with Sister Leung's handing over the Union constitution
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