Sessional_Paper_1895 — Page 451

No. 13.

HONGKONG.

THE EDUCATIONAL REPORT FOR 1894,

Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of

His Excellency the Governor.

447

No. 31

95

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT,

HONGKONG, 4th May, 1895.–

SIR,—I have the honour to forward to you the Annual Report on Education for the year 1894.

2. GENERAL EDUCATIONAL STATISTICS.-The total number of Educational Institutions of all descrip- tions, known to have been at work in the Colony of Hongkong during the year 1894, amounts to 232 Schools, with an enrolment of 10,750 scholars. More than one half of these, viz., 5,964 scholars, attended 99 Grant-in-Aid Schools; 2,686 scholars attended 21 Government Schools; 1,757 scholars were under instruction in 104 Chinese Kaifong Schools, and 343 scholars in 8 unclassed public or private Schools. Compared with the enrolment of the preceding year, these figures show a decrease of 45 Schools with 1,373 scholars. This extraordinry decrease is caused by the outbreak, in summer 1894, of the bubonic plague and the consequent removal from the Colony of untold numbers of families and children. But as these figures refer only to enrolment, which was well nigh fixed before the plague commenced, the 45 Schools that have disappeared do not represent the whole injury inflicted by the plague upon local education, but merely the nett number of Schools entirely closed. It will be shewn below that the attendance of the Schools suffered even greater loss than the mere enrolment.

3. DECENNIAL STATISTICS OF SCHOOLS UNDER THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT.-The total num- ber of Schools, subject to supervision and examination on the part of the Education Department (exclusive of Queen's College and Police School), amounted in the year 1894 to 118 Schools, as com pared with 90 Schools in the year 1884 and 39 Schools in the year 1874. The total number of scholars, enrolled in this same class of Schools during the year 1894, amounted to 7,246 scholars, as compared with 5,885 scholars in the year 1884 and 2,563 scholars in the year 1874. In other words, there has been an increase of 51 such Schools with 3,322 scholars during the ten years from 1874 to 1884 and a similar, but (owing to the plague and the withdrawal of Queen's College) much smaller increase of only 20 Schools and 1,361 scholars.

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4. TRIENNIAL STATISTICS OF SCHOOLS UNDER THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT.--In the year 1892 there were 130 Schools with 8,277 scholars under the supervision of the Department. In the follow- ing year (1893) there was a decrease of 4 Schools and an increase of 329 scholars, but, owing to the above mentioned causes, a further adventitious decrease of 18 Schools and 1,360 scholars took place in the year 1894.

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5. COMPARATIVE STATISTICS OF GRANT-IN-AID SCHOOLS AND GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS UNDER THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT.-Referring again to those 118 Schools with 7,246 scholars under the cognizance of the Education Department, there were in the year 1894 as many as 5,964 scholars (nearly five-sixths of the whole number) enrolled in 99 Grant-in-Aid Schools where they received a Christian education, whilst 1,282 scholars (a little over one-sixth) attended 19 Government Schools receiving a secular education. These secular Government Schools are all Free Schools with the exception of the Belilios Public School, the fees of which (covering also cost of books and stationery) are considerably below the average of fees charged in similar Voluntary Schools. All the religious Grant-in-Aid Schools, as well as the Government Schools, offer purely Chinese instruction free of all charge. It is only in the case of Schools giving a European education that twelve of the Grant-in-Aid Schools (9 English and 3 Portuguese Schools) and one Government School (Belilios Public School) charge school-fees, the latter at the rate of half a dollar a month, the former at rates varying from half u dollar to three dollars a month. An absolutely free European education is offered in English by 8 Grant-in-Aid Schools and 4 Government Schools, and in Portuguese by 3 Grant-in-Aid Schools, whilst an absolutely free Chinese education is offered by 77 Grant-in-Aid Schools and 14 Government Schools.

6. ATTENDANCE IN SCHOOLS UNDER THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT.--The havoc wrought by the outbreak of the plague among those Schools which maintained their existence throughout this ordeal, appears very strikingly from the Tables (IV, V, VII, and IX) appended to this report. Comparing the attendance of Schools in 1894, as given in these returns, with the corresponding returns of the preceding year, it is seen that the minimum daily attendance, which in 1893 equalled 64.92 per cent. of the maximum daily attendance, fell in 1894 to 38.80 per cent., and that the average daily attendance, which in 1893 amounted to 78.19 per cent. of the enrolment, fell in 1894 to 61.41 per cent.