Sessional_Paper_1889 — Page 277

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No. 18

89.

HONGKONG.

GIRLS' SCHOOL.

Presented to the Legislative Council, by Command of His Excellency the Governor.

No. 41.

SIR,

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT,

HONGKONG, 5th July, 1889.

I have the honour formally to recommend that the Government take steps to establish a Girls' School intended to give an English education to girls of all classes, on the principles of the present Government Central School (for boys) and that measures be taken at once to start such a School on 1st March, 1890.

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2. In former Educational Reports and especially in my Report for 1888 (paragraph 10), I pointed out that a vast majority of the children in Hongkong who remain uneducated (over 8,000 in number) are girls, that female education as a whole is still in a very backward condition in the Colony, that a good deal has been done indeed to put a purely Chinese education within the reach of Chinese girls, that the Roman Catholic Missions are providing an English education for girls of their own denomination, but that hardly anything has hitherto been done for the girls of non-Catholic classes to offer them that sort of English or Anglo- Chinese education which during the last 25 years has been, with annually in- creasing liberality, provided for boys, by the Government Central School and by about a dozen similar institutions, and finally that there is no prospect of private effort coming forward to supply this pressing deficiency in the sphere of female education.

3. The girls for whose benefit I desire the Government to provide an English education may be said to belong principally to the very classes of people who send their boys to the Government Central School, that is to say Chinese (about 90 per cent.), European (about 4 per cent.), Indian (about 3 per cent.) and Eurasian (about 3 per cent.) Virtually, I may say, the girls whom I expect eventually to attend the proposed Government Girls' School are the sisters of the 600 boys now attending the Government Central School. Other classes may indeed send their daughters to the proposed School, but such an extra contingent will be an extremely small minority.

4. Among the objections raised against the plan of offering to girls, some 93 per

cent. of whom are of Chinese or Eurasian extraction, an English education, it has been urged that the local system of concubinage would only be fostered by providing Chinese or Eurasian girls with an English education. This objection has hitherto had special weight with the public for the reason that the Ladies' Committee (under the late Bishop SMITH), which started the Diocesan Female Training School in 1862, found itself compelled in 1865 to close the School on the ground that almost every one of the girls, taught English in that School, became, on leaving school, the kept mistress of foreigners. But the circumstances surround- ing this Girls' School problem have undergone a very considerable alteration since 1865. In those days, the girls drifting into concubinage had no opportunity to learn that smattering of English colloquial which they require for their purposes, and consequently they crowded into the Diocesan School in 1862 which at that time could hardly get girls of any other class. At the present day there are numerous little evening Schools scattered over the Colony where these girls can learn what little English they require, whilst all existing Girls' Schools have as

The Honourable F. STEWART, LL.D.,

Colonial Secretary.