CO_1030_1459_HONG_KONG_CONSTITUTIONAL_DEVELOPMENT_1963_1965 — Page 101

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From

largely successful, to give primary education to every child. this it follows that the Colony over the last five years could afford the increase of expenditure on education, (only 3/20ths, 15%, of the total expenditure), without interfering much with other desirable

expenditure.

Unless therefore education is less desirable than the other items, (surely an absurd assumption?) why endeavour to make it more

To do so in the circumstances inaccessible by an increase in fees?

is illogical and absurd, since the ultimate aim, as stated in the report, is free primary education. Certainly Messrs. Marsh and Sampson are no

economists!

As to pupils' fees, we maintain that the object of Hong Kong's education policy ought to be the abolition of primary school fees (to

the

be paid for by an adequate income tax); in the case of secondary education

the report has not shown that even on the basis of present taxation, Colony cannot afford the public expenditure involved by the present

scale of fees for this essential public service.

A third important and unjustifiable proposal in this report is that secondary education should be based on the assumption (p.11 para. 22) that only 15% of the primary school children are "capable of

benefitting from a full secondary school course".

This is racial

discrimination indeed, in flagrant contradiction to the practice in English-speaking schools here, and to the specific recommendations of the Working Commission of 1962 (p.7, para. 18), both of which assume 100% promotions from primary to 5-year secondary government sponsored English schools in Hong Kong. In point of fact the figure of 15% implies a secondary school population of only 81,000, whereas at the present moment the numbers receiving secondary education are already very much higher: government and aided schools contain 37,000, private 94,000, making a current total of 131,000. Either, therefore, dullards are being over-cducated by good parents, or the government is showing

ragial bias; it is fairly obvious which is the case.

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Moreover, in spite Page 101 of 344

of Hong Kong's obvious disadvantages, (population density and bad

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