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Those Government Schools. in town and in the villages, which give an clementary Chinese education gratis, and the Aided Village Schools, which give the same education charging fees, have continued, during the year 1889, teaching also Arithmetic and Geography, in addition to their classical Chinese love. As regards those Aided Village Schools, arrangements have been male, as above mentioned, to convert them into Government Schools. That is to say, while hitherto the Govern- ment and the respective Village Communities nominally shared between them the expenses of each School, the Government, seeing that the villagers have habitually been evading their share in the compact and thrown the burden of school fees entirely upon the individual scholars, have resolved henceforth to provide the whole of the expenses of these elementary Schools. This measure will not only have the effect of making elementary education throughout the Colony free of charges to the parents of children, but, by giving the selection of the teachers to the Government, this measure will enable the Government to substitute in course of time a better class of teachers and thus improve the standard of elementary Chinese teaching given in these Schools,

13. GRANT-IN-AID SCHOOLS.Those Grant-in-Aid Schools which give an elementary Chinese elucation in the Chinese language continue to increase in number from year to year. In location also they follow the expansion of the town, sharing in the movement of the population from the more crowded centres to quarters in the suburbs where rows of new houses have lately been erected, and penetrating also to the larger villages. Their standard of teaching improves sensibly, and there is now a general demand for Arithmetic to be added as a special subject to the ordinary routine teaching of these Schools. and in the Girls Schools, there is a general call for a seventh standard to be included in the list of standards at the next revision of the Grant-in-Aid Scheme. This general advance in the standard of education given in these Mission Schools is very encouraging. Among the Missionary Societies, all of which deserve the thanks of the Government for their efforts made in 1889 to extend the sphere of this elementary Chinese education, offered in all cases free of charge and open to all comers, special mention must be made of the efforts of the Basel Mission (Rev. G. Reuscu) and the Female Education Society (Miss JOHNSTONE) to start new Schools in the villages, an i of the Roman Catholic Mission which is making rapid strides in extending educational facilities among the Chinese Catholics as well as among the Portuguese (to whom their energies were hitherto almost exclusively devoted).

The number of Schools giving a European education in the Chinese language (with or without the use of the Romanized system), which had remained stationary (at two Schools, the Berlin and the Basel Mission Schools) for more than ten years, has now been increased by the addition of the Victoria Home and Orphanage School (Mrs. OST). When application was made for the transfer of this School from Class I (giving a Chinese education in the Chinese language) to Class III (giving a European education in the Chinese language), the late Dr. STEWART, as Colonial Secretary, recommended the application to the Governor by the brief minute "This is a step in the right direction." It is highly desirable that this movement, which is a specially apt method of raising the standard of education now offered in the Colony to Chinese girls, be followed up by other Managers..

The Grant-in-Aid Schools in Class IV, giving a European education, whether elementary or secondary, in a European language, continued in 1889 the previous line of progress. The elementary Portuguese Schools are gradually improving as regards the quality of the teaching given by them. But there is a great need for some stimulus to be applied to these Schools, as above mentioned, to purify the language used in these Schools from its local deformities. If an Officer of the Education Department could be induced to study the local Portuguese dialect and to qualify himself, by a short stay at Lisbon, to act as an Assistant Examiner for the benefit of these and similar Schools, a beneficial reform might soon be looked for.

As to the elementary English Schools in the Colony, the opening of a free English School in the centre of T'áip'ingshán, by the Rev. J. B. Osr, was a noteworthy.event. The fact that this School, situated among the veriest slums of the town, gained at once, and maintained even after the opening of the new Victoria College, an attendance of 113 Chinese boys, bringing 96 boys under examination, shews clearly that a demand for elementary English teaching is now springing up in the Colony among classes hitherto not appreciating the value of an English education. Moreover, good results were obtained at the examination of this School, even in Algebra.

The secondary English Schools of the Colony have, in almost every case, increased their staff in 1889, and continued to give the same increased attention, to which I had occasion to refer in my last Report, to the higher subjects of an English education. These secondary Schools keep up a close neck-to-neck race with the Victoria College. Every improvement the latter makes, is at once followed by a similar effort on the part of the other Schools. Thus a healthy emulation has arisen between these Schools, and while the Victoria College now hardly manages to keep ahead of the others in spite of its superior advantages, there is on all sides great need of circumspection lest this healthful compe- tition be continued to the detriment of physical health through causing over-pressure on the part of the scholars.

The needlework examination has been conducted on the same lines as before. The need of substituting for the present undefined standard of attainments a graduated scale, such as has been