ENG-1959 — Page 25

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HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

in some schools, instead of the two-sessional system which is now, unfortunately but of necessity, common practice.

There is also another reason for permitting the planned excess. The children who entered in the original wave are now growing up, and the problem of post-primary education can no longer be deferred. At the beginning of the 1949-50 school year, the second- ary school enrolment figure was 24,725, and by the beginning of the current year this figure had risen only to 74,625. The Board of Education was accordingly considering plans for the expansion of secondary school places at the end of the year; and undoubtedly the Colony will have to concentrate an additional effort on secondary school expansion in the next few years. An excess of primary school places, which would allow some respite in the primary school programme, would clearly be of help during the period of urgent expansion of secondary education.

Two important developments in the field of post-secondary education occurred during the past year. First, the University of Hong Kong and the Government agreed on a seven-year expansion programme which will eventually nearly double the number of students for whom places are available--the increase being from 1,000 to 1,800. In pursuance of this policy, the Government agreed to meet the deficit on running expenses involved in this expansion, which will necessitate a considerable increase in the subvention towards annually recurrent expenditure. The University will now also embark upon a capital expansion programme estimated to cost approximately $24.5 million, with support from Govern- ment funds and from United Kingdom Colonial Development and Welfare funds. The second important development was the Government's decision to help certain of the existing Chinese Post-Secondary Colleges to improve their standards with the even- tual aim of assisting them to combine into a second University in which the main language of instruction would be Chinese. One effect of these developments will be that these two institutions, together with the Hong Kong Technical College, will be better able to meet the increased demand for post-secondary education which will shortly arise as one consequence of the mass immigra- tion of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

To sum up on educational matters, a total of 485,000 pupils were at school in Hong Kong when the new term started in