Sessional_Paper_1907 — Page 905

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Sheko School.

33. This small Vernacular School, now closed, was the last representative of a numbe of village schools opened by the Hongkong Government in its first attempt to give a system of education to the Colony. Most of them have long since been taken over by the Mission- ary Bodies, and are represented by the Vernacular Grant Schools of the present day.

GRANT SCHOOLS.

34. A detailed report on the work done in each school is given in Appendix B. The Annual Grant List, shewing the number of Standards, the average attendance and the Grant earned by each school, together with other information, is given in Table VII.

English Schools, Non-Chinese.

35. There are 10 schools in this class with a total average attendance of 940. The largest of these, the Diocesan School for Boys, St. Joseph's College and the Italian Convent, each of which have an attendance of over 200, have been returned as thoroughly efficient. There is only a slight increase in the numbers of the schools of this class.

Anglo-Chinese Schools.

36. Of these, 3 are in the Upper Grade; but only one, the Ellis Kadoorie School, is of much educational importance. It has an average attendance of over 300. Additions to the school buildings were completed in the course of the year, towards the cost of which the Government will contribute $7,000. The Cathedral School was voluntarily closed in the middle of the year.

37. There were 4 Lower Grade schools of this type; but one of them, number 71, was closed by the management in the early part of the year. Two others have been adversely reported on. Their average attendance has fallen from 85 last year to 44. The remaining school in this class continues to do very useful-work.

Vernacular Schools.

38. Owing to absences in the European Staff, two of the Upper Grade Schools, the Training Home and the Berlin Foundling House, had this year to be reckoned as Lower Grade Schools. The high rate of exchange makes the money loss a small one; and when the weakest. Lower Grade Schools have been weeded out in the manner foreshadowed below, it will probably be possible to drop the distinction of Upper and Lower Grade in the Vernacular Schools.

39. As stated above, while Vernacular education in Private Schools continues to increase and improve, in Grant schools though it improves it does not increase numerically. Since the ground of the Vernacular education of the Colony is less than half covered by the Grant Schools, a position which they shew no signs of being able to extend, the justification of their existence inust rather be sought in their claim to be model schools than a mechanism for supplying free education to the poor.

40. The progress of the best Vernacular Schools has during the year under review been rapid. The course of study and time-table printed as an appendix to my Report for last year have been voluntarily adopted and carefully followed by them. The appointments of the Sub-Inspectors of Needlework and of Vernacular Schools have also proved most stimulat- ing. On the other hand, there are several schools, which seem unable to reach such a point of efficiency as would make them worth studying by private school masters anxious to learn all that the Government has to teach. And they are inefficient in another respect: they have only a very few pupils above the second Standard. Now although the course of study is intended to meet the cases of children, who are likely to stay at school only for a feiv years, still 2 years is too short a time in which to accomplish any lasting results, either moral or mental. I have therefore not hesitated to return some schools as inefficient, for the sole reason that the education they are giving is too limited in time to make it worth paying a Grint for.