Colonial State Entrapped – The Problem of Unregistered Schools in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s

Utilizing sources from newspapers, published official documents, and declassified governmental files from archives in Hong Kong and England, this article explores the problem of unregistered schools in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s. After the war the Hong Kong colonial government played a limited role in education provision, and private institutions became the chief providers of schooling facilities. To prevent private schools from operating in a manner detrimental to the political stability of the territories, and to ensure pupils' health and safety, the ruling authorities imposed strict regulations. This approach increased the cost of running private schools, caused a substantial portion of education demand to remain unfulfilled, and consequently led to the emergence of unregistered schools. These unlawful institutions placed the government under tremendous pressure, both because some were tied to questionable political factions and because the founding of these institutions provoked objections from operators of legal private schools. Since the colonial state continued to assume a limited role in education provision, strong action brought against unlawful institutions would have further increased the number of unschooled children and undermined the popularity of the government. These pressures made the presence of black market schools a very difficult problem to resolve.