Grant-in-Aid Scheme an absolutely secular measure, offering to all schools, willing to devote four consecutive hours a day to exclusively secular teaching, annual grants, on the basis of definite results in secular instruction, ascertained by examining each individual scholar. This Scheme having been approved by the Legislative Council (April 24, 1873) and provisionally accepted by the Protestant and Catholic Missionaries, was at once put in operation, 5 Protestant and 1 Catholic school being placed under the Scheme. To conciliate objections raised by some of the Missionaries (Dr. Eitel and Bishop Raimondi) to the absolutely secular teaching demanded of Grant-in-Aid schools, whilst the Government schools used Chinese school books containing Confucian and Buddhist religious teachings, a compromise (refused by the Catholics) was made, allowing the Grant-in-Aid schools to use Chinese reading books containing an admixture of religious teaching. To compile these reading books, the Governor appointed (April 17, 1873) Dr. Eitel as chairman of a Schoolbook Committee which produced without delay a set of three graduated readers after the pattern of the Irish National Schoolbook Society's publications. By the end of the year 1876 there were 11 Protestant schools under the Grant-in-Aid Scheme, but the Roman Catholics withdrew entirely, being dissatisfied with the rigid exclusion of religion from every one of the four hours of daily instruction required by the Scheme. The attendance in schools under Government supervision rose during Sir Arthur's administration from 1,480 scholars in 1872 to 2,922 scholars in 1876. There was similar progress made, during this period, in the sphere of religious education. Bishop Burdon resuscitated St. Paul's College, in 1876, by opening a Church of England school for Chinese and European scholars under an English Headmaster (A. J. May) and two Chinese Assistant Masters. Most striking, however, was the manner in which the Roman Catholic schools now came to the front under the direction of Bishop Raimondi. When the latter first arrived in the Colony, in 1858, there was only one Catholic school in existence, numbering eight boys, but in 1874 there were
