Sessional_Paper_1931 — Page 229

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The Junior Technical

Schools of London.

A Govern-

ment

Technical

School in

•

training in a junior technical school preparing for constructive trades. Such a school provides during a period of two to three years, a sub- stantial time for the study of English subjects together with mathe- matics, science, mechanical drawing and manual instruction in wood and metal. This training while specially suitable for a boy who wishes to become a skilled artizan, is so frequently followed up by further technical study, mainly in evening "classes, that boys from these schools, ultimately find their way into a number of miscellaneous posts, in the industry, many of them of a higher grade than that of a skilled mechanic.

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74. We agree that it would be futile to heap technical education on an immature Chinese boy but we do not agree that general education can not be directed toward constructive trades. We hold strongly that a school in which this attempt is made is better calculated to produce the apprentice that the engineering and shipbuilding industry of Hong Kong requires rather than a school whose curriculum is dominated by the University Local Examinations which would seem to be the only alternative. The Junior Technical Schools of London have been recently described thus:-

"They (ie. the Junior Technical Schools) take in boys from the age of 13 and give them concurrently both a general and a specialized education. The essential feature of the system is the recognition of the fact that much real knowledge is to be acquired only through the finger tips, that manual skill is no less worthy than book-learning and that skill of hand is in reality skill of brain, and that a training, which has direct vocational value is not necessarily deficient in cultural merit.

75. We have consulted Mr. G. E. S. Upsdell, now a Government School-master in the Ellis Kadoorie School, but a qualified electrical engineer and a Companion of the Institute of Engineers. Mr. Upsdell writes to the Chairman :-

"From your letter I gather that it is the wish of your Committee to start a school which will eventually turn out Chinese capable of filling the positions of junior foremen and draftsmen in foreign establishments, a school similar to institutions in the United Kingdom where practical and theoretical training in engineering and architecture is given and from my own experience, having received my elementary training in such an institute, I feel that this is the line. on which it would be advisable to develop."

76. We are unanimous in urging the necessity for the establishment and main- tenance by Government of a Junior Technical School. This school should feed the Hong Kong. apprentice system of the Colony with adequately educated and promising youths. But the matter can not be left at that. The next stage is the stage of evening or off- shift classes. How are these classes to be organized, controlled and maintained? Our answer is that Government should establish and maintain an institution which should have a dual function, that is to say that it should combine a Junior Technical School with an organization for the further and technical education of workers. This combina- tion of functions in one technical institution is very common in England. We suggest that the institution for the establishment of which we are now pressing, should be called the Government Technical School and that it should consist of two departments --The Junior Technical School Department and the Department of Further and Technical Education.

77. We are also convinced that it is necessary to appoint a well qualified and experienced principal of this technical school. We want new machinery, and the first essential piece of machinery is, we think, the Technical School. This involves some one to direct it. The present school system of Hong Kong is one-sided. The Director of Education has no one to advise him with reference to the special needs of the industries and their workers. There is no one to whom the industries and their workers can turn for help in this vital matter. The Technical Institute has no building and no permanent staff; it is directed by one of the two Inspectors of English schools and its activities which could not in our opinion possibly be extended to cover the whole field of apprentices and other industrial workers, are limited by the varying grants which are voted for it in the annual education estimates. In the course of our inquiries we have been struck by the amount which has been written in the course of the last few years about technical education in Hong Kong. That the practical effect