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attending school may be estimated at 8,893 which sum comes near the number actually enrolled in 1891, viz, 9,681. Deducting the number of children attending school, 8,893, from the number of persons of school-going age, viz., 22,298, there would be left 13,405 persons not accounted for. Of this number some are educated by private tutors, but it would be difficult to say how many, and the remainder must be presumed to be uneducated." These statistics, referring to the children of the resident civil population, deduced from the Census of 1891, are very much what I had expected, confirming my former annual calculations, viz., that in Hongkong, as in England, about one half of the children of school-going age actually come under instruction in public or private Schools. But a careful analysis of the Census tables revealed the fact that the above given number of 22,298 children of school-going age takes no account of the children of the local boat population, in whose case the returns furnished only the number of children under 17 years of age. As we may safely assume that the proportion of boat-people's children of 5 years and under, to those of 6 to 16 years, is about the same as in the case of the resident civil population, viz., 30.45 per cent., I find that there were, among the 10,927 boat-people's children under 17 years (6,196 boys and 4,731 girls) as many as 7,601 children (4,310 boys and 3,291 girls) of school-going age (6 to 16 years). Hence we have before us the startling fact that in 1891 there were in the Colony altogether 29,899 children who ought to have come under instruction, whilst the registers of all the Schools under the Education Department in the year 1891 and the returns of the Private Schools show an enrolment of no more than 9,758 children (leaving the Police School out of the calculation). In other words, the saddening fact stares us in the face, that in spite of the existence of 215 Schools in the Colony (as proved by the Census) which are with the exception of Victoria College mostly crowded, and in spite of every effort made by the Education Department, and the Registrar General who has always most cordially assisted (by means of his District Watchmen), to stimulate school attendance, there were in 1891 as many as 20,141 children of school-going age in the Colony who attend no school. Of a total of 15,748 boys of school-going age only 6,657, or 42.27 per cent., attended school, (viz., 4,951 in Schools under Government supervision and 1,706 in Private Schools). Of a total of 14,151 girls of school-going age, only 3,101, or 21.91 per cent., came under school-instruction (viz., 2,791 in schools under the Education Department and 310 in Private Schools). The case of the boys is not bad, certainly no worse than in Ireland, as nearly one half of the boys of school-going age do attend School. But the principal defaulters in the matter of school attendance are clearly the girls, and of this point the Government has been aware all along. Of the 7,601 children (6 to 16 years) of the boat population and of the purchased servant girls (ef the same age), there are at present hardly 200 or 300 coming under instruction.

Things are however not half as bad as they look. It must be understood that although our local school-age is correctly fixed, not at 5 to 13 years as in England, but at 6 to 16 years, because the majority of children in this Colony do require, for a proper education, at least 4 years at Chinese and 6 years at English studies or 10 years at Chinese classical studies and the average age observed among scholars is actually 6 to 16 years, yet of the 20,141 children of 6 to 16 years of age not attending any school in 1891, a large number had been in Chinese Schools previously for 2 to 4 years and then went into business life without finishing their education. Consequently we may, I think, safely say that of the 20,141 children of local school-going age who, in 1891, attended no school at all, a large number, possibly one half, though they must technically be classed with the uneducated, have received some sort of education, such as their parents think sufficient, and are not absolutely illiterate.

I am

Under these circumstances I think that, though there is indeed a danger of illiteracy increasing in Hongkong at a greater ratio than the population, still the drastic European remedy of a compulsory attendance law with its frictional working-gear of School-Tax, School-Boards, Attendance Cominittees and Police Court prosecutions, is neither necessary nor practicable under local circumstances. satisfied that the Government will sufficiently discharge its duties by giving to our local school system, which has slowly but healthily developed in the shadow of the Colony's exuberant growth, as wide and as rapid expansion as financial means allow, with a view to provide, as soon as possible, additional school accommodation for about one half of our uneducated or imperfectly educated children. In other words, what we have to aim at is to bring at least half of the number of children of school-going age, say fifteen thousand scholars, under instruction in local schools. But as we have provided at present for hardly ten thousand of them, and as the number to be taken into consideration increases from year to year, a determined effort will have to be made immediately to further the expansion of elementary education in the most economic and efficient way possible. What I think has to be done therefore is, in the first instance, to retrench expenditure in all Departmental Schools, so far as it can be done without impairing their efficiency, and secondly to make every possible effort to encourage voluntary educational enterprise and to expand in every direction the Grant-in-Aid system rather than the more expensive Departmental Schools. But, further, special efforts will have to be made to bring into the education net the children of those classes of the population which habitually deny them the privileges of education. I venture therefore to urge, as in former Reports, the advisability of compelling by law the registration and education of all purchased servant girls in the Colony. I do not know, and have no means of ascertaining, how many children of school-going age are under the local system of domestic bond-servitude. But, at a rough guess, I think there may be two thousand of them or more. Again, I would recommend once more to prohibit by law the employment, at public labour, of children apparently under thirteen years of age. Next, I think, special efforts will have to be made to apply moral pressure to the boat population to arouse them to a sense of the educational needs of their