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average attendance. At the close of the school-year there was a prospect of the attendance rising to over 60 scholars, which warrants the expectation of steady development in the near future. The School has had hard up-hill work in its first year of existence, and has been considerably hampered by changes in the superintendence and by the unsuitability of its location and narrowness of accommoda- tion. For a few years to come, this School will be an abnormally costly institution until larger attend- ances and a raising of the fees balance to some extent the costliness of house-rent and staff.

14. GOVERNMENT DISTRICT SCHOOLS.-The Anglo-Chinese District Schools, situated respectively at Saiyingpun, Wantsai, Wongnaichung, Stanley, Yaumati and Shaukiwan and attended in 1890, by 510 scholars have, with one exception, done good work and enjoy the confidence of the people evidenced by the fact that they are overcrowded and in some cases have had to refuse admission to numbers of intending scholars for want of accommodation. The erection of one new District School- building, the first on the list of five new buildings sanctioned in 1882, has been commenced, in the autumn of 1890, at Saiyingpun, and promises to be a good model of a District School-building. The Anglo-Chinese School at Shaukiwan does not meet with the favour of the villagers and is so poorly attended that it seems hardly worth while to continue it as a Government School. The principal objections of the villagers are that the School-building is unhealthy, that one school-master cannot satisfactorily teach both English and Chinese because as a general rule proficiency in one of these languages is accompanied by incompetency in the other, and that the Government ought to provide one teacher for English instruction, one for the Hakka and Hoklo, and one for the Punti dialect to please all the parents. This is out of the question. The better plan will be to work the School under the Grant-in-Aid Scheme, which leaves room for the villagers or private educationists making efforts of their own to secure a school or schools according to their own notions and receiving from the Government such aid as the results ascertained by examination will justify. The other Government District Schools, giving a purely Chinese education in the Chinese language and attended in 1890 by $62 scholars, distributed over 28 Schools in town and in the villages of Hongkong and Kowloon, have been continuing their work in a manner calling for no special remark. But the question of fees con- nected with some of these Schools, viz. those hitherto designated by the terin "Aided Village Schools," has been definitely settled in 1890, it having been resolved by the Governor, Sir W. DES Vœux to abolish school-fees in these elementary Schools, to provide the school furniture and to raise the salaries of the Masters, by converting these Aided Schools, hitherto nominally in charge of the respective village communities, into ordinary Government Schools. Accordingly the old furniture of the former Govern- ment Central School was distributed among these Schools, and the payment of fees ceased in all the villages at the beginning of 1890. An elementary Chinese education throughout the six Standards and elementary Anglo-Chinese education up to Standard IV is therefore now within reach of the people, in town and villages, free of any charge (so far as the existing house accommodation goes), and all elementary Government Schools, with the exception of Victoria College and the Government Central School for Girls, are now free schools. Some years ago, Mr. JOHN RUSSELL, a great advocate of free education for the poor, published, in connection with the Indian and Colonial Exhibition at South Kensington, a report on "the Schools of Greater Britain," in which he remarked, with reference to the educational system of Hongkong, that "from an English stand point the system of Government education (in Hongkong) would probably be condemned as reaching only the middle classes whose educational requirements should be met by private enterprise and missing the poorer classes whose necessities are more imperative." All cause for the blame, thus deservedly laid on our educational system six years ago, has now been removed, so far as circumstances admit of it.

15. GRANT-IN-AID SCHOOLS.-The general movement in the direction of raising the standard of the education given in all the various Grant-in-Aid Schools (76 in number and attended in 1890 by 4,656 scholars), to which I referred in my last Report, has continued in 1890. There is on all sides a demand for a Seventh Standard to be added to the provisions of the Grant-in-Aid Scheme. There can be no doubt, from an educational point of view, that this demand is sound and will, if complied with, have the effect of inducing most parents to leave their children in school for a year longer than has hitherto been customary, the result of which measure would be greater solidity and permanence in the practical results of the whole course of education. But the proposed measure has a financial aspect and requires for its execution an increase in that annual vote for Grants-in-Aid which, in the experience of the past, has again and again been insufficient to provide for the payment of the ordinary grants earned under the Grant-in-Aid Scheme, and necessitated, in the case of the Grants earned in 1890, a pro rata reduction of 10.5 per cent. Unless the Legislative Council is willing periodically to increase the sum annually voted for Grants-in-Aid at a rate higher than that hitherto adopted, the addi- tion of a Seventh Standard would only add to the disappointment so frequently caused by those vexa- tious pro rata reductions.

The annual examination of the Grant-in-Aid Schools exhibited fair progress made in most of the Schools, both in elementary and secondary subjects, but the advances made in the teaching of Grammar in the case of the Italian Convent Schools (both in English and in Portuguese), Composition in the case of St. Joseph's College and the Diocesan School and of almost every subject in the Victoria English School (Girls Division) stood out most prominently. The number of scholars brought for- ward for examination in the special subjects of Algebra, Euclid, Physical Geography, Book-keeping, Animal Physiology and Latin, has been greater than in any previous year. The subjoined table exhibits the results of the examination in those special subjects.