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children. This can be done by the appointment of a Chinese Attendance Officer, as suggested in 1889 by the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and by the supply of additional Schools at Taikoktsui, Yaumati, Aberdeen and Shaukiwan. But as the foregoing measures will put an additional strain on our annually increasing educational expenditure, I venture finally to subunit for the consideration of the Government, with particular reference to the need of School-houses and Building Grants, the question whether it may not be advisable to create, in some way, a special School Fund. I find it stated on good authority that the excellent provision which the United States, in the absence of the ancient educational endowments of Europe, have made for Schools of all grades is principally due to a law made in 1785, that "in all new States thereafter to be added to the seventeen then existing a special appropriation of one sixteenth of the public land should be reserved for the purpose of supplying a School Fund." It seems to me that some similar measure is needed in Hongkong to provide for the future. To conclude this list of the most pressing of our present educational needs, I beg to point out, with reference to 14 boys of school-going age found, on the last Census day, in prison, that the present impossibility of effectively segregating and educating juvenile offenders whilst in prison, and the absence of power to forcibly detain inmates of the only local Reformatory, constitutes not only a serious educational defect, but one that is likely to create habitual criminals. The principal statistics of children remaining uneducated will be found concisely summarized in Table XVI. appended to this Report.

11.-RESULTS OF THE ANNUAL EXAMINATIONS.-As far as the 81 Voluntary Grant-in-Aid Schools are concerned. the detailed results of the annual examination of these Schools will be found summarized in Table XIV. appended to this Report where the percentage of scholars, passed in each School in 1891, is stated and compared with the results of the preceding year, and in Table XV. which records the percentage of passes gained by these schools in each subject. As regards the Departmental Government Schools, the reports of the Headmaster of Victoria College and of the Headmistress of the Government Central School for Girls have been published in the local papers and in the Government Gazette. The Departmental District Schools will be found classified and arranged in the order of their efficiency, in Table X. appended to this Report, which Table embodies the results of the annual examination of these District Schools. I subjoin, however, a few critical observations as to those examinations the results of which have not yet been sufficiently brought forward.

12. VICTORIA COLLEGE.-With a staff consisting in the aggregate of a Headmaster and thirty- eight teachers, viz.: 8 English and 10 Chinese Masters with 8 salaried pupil-teachers and monitors all available for English work, and 4 other Chinese Masters for Chinese instruction as well as 8 further Chinese Masters assisting the corresponding number of English Masters and with an enrolment of 1,108 boys, Victoria College brought only 709 boys under examination, the average attendance throughout the year being 159 boys. The examinations were conducted, as in the preceding years, by the Head- master and myself conjointly. The Headmaster set the papers for the English examination and I revised and added to them. The examination of the Anglo-Chinese Division and of the pupil-teachers training- class, as also the English reading of the whole College, was taken by myself in the presence of the Headmaster. The subjects for English composition and the whole of the papers for the examination of the Chinese Classes, were set by myself. The written answers of the boys having been marked and adjudged by the Headmaster, he announced on prize-giving day the results of this joint examination, as they appeared to him, and embodied his own views (as to results obtained in the pupil-teachers' examination, and in the several classes of the Upper, Lower, and Preparatory Schools with special reference to Mathematics, English Dictation, Composition, Grammar and Shakespeare) in his report which was read on the same occasion and published in the local papers and in the Government Gazette. I confine my remarks therefore to those subjects which the Headmaster's report passes over in silence, though it gives me pleasure to be able to say that a perusal of the boys' papers has once more impressed me with the fact that the School does really excellent work, on the whole, in the subjects of Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, and Mensuration. But while the School is decidedly apt to produce specialists in mathematics, the teaching of the specifically English subjects appears to be proportionately less successful. There are, however, peculiarly unfavourable circumstances surrounding the English teaching of Victoria College. The majority of the boys as well as the Masters are Chinese who seldom speak or hear a word of English outside the School. The boys who, before entering the College, have passed through four or more years' study of books written in classical Chinese have, in Victoria College, English reading books put in their hands which in no way connect with the social, moral and national environment of a Chinese brain, home or school, but plunge these boys head over heels into a sphere, congenial indeed to the English-bred school-boy, but to these Chinese lads utterly bewildering, besides presupposing an amount of knowledge of idiomatic and technical English phrases which every English school-boy has at his fingers' ends when first entering school but which are Greek to these Chinese youths even when they have spent five or six years in Victoria College. Under these circumstances, when commencing the English reading examination of the College, I told the Headmaster that I would ignore mispronunciation of any words of foreign origin and pass anything below three gross failures of simple Saxon words contained in five lines from that portion of the reading book of each class which had been read and explained in the ordinary reading lessons within the previous few months. Applying such a low standard, I expected every boy of ever so mediocre attainments to pass easily. But I was sadly disappointed. I subjoin a Table of Results which speaks for itself. It appears to me to confirm what I have pointed out in former reports, viz., that English