Sessional_Paper_1931 — Page 214

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Technical

17. For a number of years the Education Department has organised evening The classes. These classes were originally known as "Evening Classes". Later, and as Institute, the present Director thinks, unfortunately, the organisation received the somewhat misleading title of "Technical Institute''. The Institute has no building nor any whole-time staff; it is not in fact an institute in the generally accepted sense of this term but an organisation. The organisation is directed by one of the Inspectors of English Schools from the Office of the Director of Education. Its classes are held mainly at Queen's College but also in the University (i.e. classes in Electrical Engineering), King's College, the Belilios Public School and the Central British School, Kowloon. The Technical Institute charges fees at the rate of $10 a term for every subject. There are two terms in a year. Government servants taking certain subjects which have a direct bearing on their work may on the recommendation of their Departmental Heads have the fees returned, if they succeed in passing the examination held at the end of the session. These fees are paid into the Treasury and the Institute has to depend for its working expenses on the provision made for it in the annual Colonial vote for education. Thus the means available for the Institute's activities vary from year to year. The Director of Education reports that funds available for the current year are earmarked down to the last dollar, and that one of the classes (that in sanitation) has only been rendered possible by a supplementary provision. As we shall show later, the Taikoo Dockyard had last year to undertake the financial responsibility for a technical class for the apprentices of the Taikoo Docks which the Institute had undertaken to organize and maintain.

18. At the present time the Technical Institute has the following classes: building construction, field surveying, physics, chemistry, sanitation, shorthand, bookkeeping, French, English literature and commercial English, hygiene and physical instruction. The Technical Institute also arranges a course for teachers, both English and vernacular.

19. With reference to this time-table the Director of Education remarks there is very little in it that can be called technical and that it is all "essentially evening". He adds that in the electrical engineering class the students are cosmopolitan, mostly Chinese or Portuguese, and employed in the day time in electric workshops and stores and that there are generally some British soldiers attending these classes The Director explains that those who attend the building construction class are day-time employees of architects and contractors.

20. There are at the moment 299 persons attending the various courses which the Institute is now holding. The number of teachers, English and Vernacular, who are attending the classes specially organized by the Institute for teachers are not included in this total.

21. Mr. Brawn who combines with the duties of Inspector of English Schools the directorship of the Technical Institute, reports that an elementary nautical class for the instruction of coxswains in the rules of the road at sea used to be conducted but that it was closed last December as it was no longer required; he adds that classes were once organised in steam, machine drawing, applied mechanics, architec- tural design, practical mathematics, logic and political economy, but that the demand for instruction in these classes was so small and fitful that the expense involved in organising and maintaining them could not be justified. The Director of the Tech- nical Institute is prepared, provided expert tuition can be obtained and funds are available, to organise a class for any technical subject. But a minimum attendance of 10 students must be guaranteed and maintained.

dockyards

22. Both the Taikoo Dockyard and Engineering Company and the Hong Kong Arrange- & Whampoa Dock Company have organised a regular system for the training of ments at the apprentices at the Taikoo and Kowloon Docks respectively. Lower Primary Schools for the are maintained, one, the Quarry Bay School, close to the Taikoo Docks and the education of other near the Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock Co.'s premises in Kowloon. The sons apprentices. of the workers of these two companies go largely to these schools for their elemen- tary vernacular education. No English is taught in these schools and the boys generally leave them at about the age of 12. The Managing Director of the Hong