Sessional_Paper_1884-1885 — Page 245

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average $10.12 per head. In addition to this expenditure incurred for Government Schools, the Govern- ment paid for the year 1884 the sum of $14,662.30 by way of Grants-in-Aid for 3,907 children educated in denominational Grant-in-Aid Schools, or $3.70 per head. Altogether, therefore, the Government spent, for the year 1884, in direct payments for the education of 5,882 children the sum of $33,650.14 or $5.71 per head. The original cost of school-buildings, the cost of repairs, and the expenses of the Inspectorate of Schools, are not included in the figures here given.

7. As to the nature of the education given in the various Schools supported or aided by the Government, there were, in 1884, as many as 2,933 children receiving a purely Chinese education in Grant-in-Aid Schools, and 1,089 children receiving the same education in Government Schools. There were 55 children receiving a Chinese education in the Chinese language, but with English in addition, and 97 children receiving a European education by the use of the Chinese language. There were, further, 822 children receiving a European education in some European language (either English or Portuguese) in Grant-in-Aid Schools and 889 children receiving an Anglo-Chinese education in Government Schools. The languages and dialects, taught in Schools under Government supervision and brought under examination, are English and Portuguese, and the Chinese language in the Punti, Hakka, and Hoklo dialects. The subjects of examination are in Chinese Schools reading, writing, repeating, composition, prosody and geography. No arithmetic is taught in purely Chinese Schools. In Schools which give a European education in the Chinese language, the foregoing subjects are taught with the exception of prosody, for which arithmetic and history are substituted, and the use of romanized writing is combined with reading and writing Chinese characters. The subjects taught in Schools which give a European or Anglo-Chinese education are (in addition to the above mentioned Chinese subjects in the case of Anglo-Chinese Schools), English (or Portuguese) reading, writing, grammar, composition, history, arithmetic, geography, physical geography, map-drawing, algebra, mensuration and Euclid. Latin and book-keeping have been added, in 1884, to the extra- subjects of the Grant-in-Aid Scheme, but none of the Grant-in-Aid Schools has as yet taken advantage of these new subjects. In Girls-schools, needle-work also is taught as one of the subjects of the Grant-in-Aid Scheme.

8. The proportion of boys to girls enrolled in the Schools under Government supervision is steadily, though slowly, improving year by year. There is, indeed, but a very slight improvement visible in 1884 as compared with the preceding year, for in 1883 there were on the rolls of these Schools 4,120 boys and 1,477 girls, whilst in 1884 there were 4,294 boys and 1,488 girls in the same Schools, shewing an increase of only 174 boys and 11 girls. But the increase becomes apparent if we compare the state of things in this respect as it was 5 and 10 years ago, when the 4,294 boys and 1,488 girls attending Schools under Government supervision in 1884 compare very favourably with 2,850 boys and 610 girls enrolled in such Schools in 1879, and with 2,282 boys and 281 girls enrolled in 1874. It appears, therefore, that the proportion of girls to boys was 1 to 8 in 1874, 1 to 4 in 1879 and 1 to 3 in 1884. But as there are hardly more than 200 girls attending Schools in the Colony apart from the above mentioned Schools under the supervision of the Government, so that the above given figures virtually cover the whole area of female education in the Colony, and as the proportion of male and female children appears from the census to be about equal, it is evident that there is much room for improvement left.

9. The results of the teaching given in Schools under Government supervision, as ascertained by the annual examinations, are, as far as the Central School is concerned, embodied in the Report of the Headmaster which will be found below; and, as far as other Government Schools and the Grant- in-Aid Schools are concerned, the results of the examinations are given in detail in the Tables appended to this Report. The following additional details and observations may, however, be of interest.

10. The Government Central School was examined by myself, as usual, in concert with the Headmaster who used the results of my examination for the purpose of determining the award of the annual prizes and scholarships. Of 379 boys of the Central School examined in 1884, as many as 362 passed, which gives 95.58 per cent. of passes, as compared with 96.98 per cent. obtained in 1883. There was, therefore, a very slight falling off in the total results, as compared with the previous year, The English subjects in which this diminution of results is specially apparent are the following, viz., arithmetic (especially in Classes VI, VII and VIII), dictation and algebra (in Class I, where the subjects given out were, perhaps, slightly more difficult than in former years), translation (especially in Class XI), and grammar (in Class VIII). Dictation was in 1884, as in the previous year, the weak side of Class I, where 14 failed out of 25, but the composition was rather good in Classes I, II and III. Classes II and VII specially distinguished themselves by obtaining the highest average of passes. The examination of the Chinese Classes, though not displaying such high results as the English teaching given in this School, shewed, on the whole, satisfactory results. But the Chinese teaching given in the Anglo-Chinese Classes continues, year by year, to yield unsatisfactory results. Even apart from the meagre results obtained at the examination, the teaching itself that appears to have been given in these Classes seems to have been defective. The whole year's tuition amounted in the first division of the Anglo-Chinese Classes to reading 13 pages in the Analects of Confucius, 22 pages in the Shing-ü-háu, and 4 pages in the Sit-yuk (vocabulary). In the second division the year's teaching consisted in reading 39 pages of Mencius, learning a single meaning of each of 250 Chinese characters, and 35 brief English sentences with curious Chinese renderings in a style mixing together