ENG-1948 — Page 89

Subsidized schools, which in 1946 catered for only 8,909 puils, now provide education for 22,231, and private schools show an enrolment of 62,923 as compared with 32,366 in 1946. The last two categories include night schools with enrolments of 1,716 and 15,062 respectively.

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Secondary education, while showing some progress during the year, has not revived to the same extent. Although the Government and Grant schools reached their pre-war enrolment, neither the subsidized nor the private schools have re-established themselves on anything like the same scale. The total result is that, as compared with 37,355 who were receiving secondary education in 1941, there were at the end of the year under review 20,802 pupils, an increase of 3,913 over 1947.

The King George Vth School (previously called the Central British) a secondary-grammar school, formerly restricted to children of pure European parentage, has now been thrown open to children of any nationality provided they have the requisite standards of English. Many Chinese, Portuguese and Indian children have availed themselves of this opportunity. A remarkable feature of the post-war years is the large increase in the number of British children in the Colony. In 1940 the Central British School contained 250 British children taking a secondary course and there were in addition three junior schools with an enrolment of 150 British children in all. At the present time there are over 450 children in the King George Vth School and there are four junior schools with over 300 children. It is proposed to make King George Vth School bi-lateral with a grammar and a modern secondary side.

Rural education continues to be mainly in the hands of private and subsidized schools, although Government maintains three primary schools, one at Taipo, one at Yuen Long and one on the island of Cheung Chau. Private schools have not yet resumed on anything like the same scale as in 1941 when there were in the rural areas as many as 48 schools; but there are now nearly twice as many subsidized schools as there were in 1941, giving primary education to 11,891 pupils.

A sphere of education which has been entered since the liberation of the Colony is the education of the children of the fishing community. Even in 1946, considerable progress had been made in this direction but during the years 1947 and 1948 the number of schools of this nature provided for the children of fishing folk was increased from four to ten; five of these receive subsidies from the Education Department. In almost all these schools the curriculum is the normal curriculum of the primary vernacular school, but in one classes of a vocational

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