Peter Donohue (; 3 September 1910 – 25 November 1976) was a British colonial education official who served as the Director of Education of Hong Kong and an official member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong from April 1961 to February 1964.
Donohue was transferred from Trinidad to the Education Department of Hong Kong in 1949. He initially worked as a senior mathematics teacher at King George V School, became the principal of the school the following year, and was subsequently appointed as Senior Education Officer in April 1952, Assistant Director of Education in September 1955, and Deputy Director of Education in December 1959. During his tenure as Director of Education, he committed to expanding primary and secondary education, participated in the preparation and establishment of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and supported the development of adult education and special education. Furthermore, he shortened the school system of Chinese middle schools from a six-year system to a five-year system to align it with that of English secondary schools.
However, his continued implementation of the modern school scheme and the introduction of the "Donohue Scheme" in 1962 to reorganize the primary and secondary school systems provoked significant public backlash. Among the proposals, the "Donohue Scheme's" recommendations to delay the primary school entry age, shorten the primary school system, and establish a special secondary school curriculum were directly criticized by the Hong Kong Government's *Marsh-Sampson Report* (1963), the *Report of the Working Committee* (1965), and the *White Paper on Education Policy* of the same year. The modern school scheme was eventually halted in 1964, and the measures implemented through the "Donohue Scheme" were not fully withdrawn until 1968. At the age of only 52, Donohue retired and returned to Britain in February 1964 due to health reasons, stepping down from the post of Director of Education after serving for only two years and eight months, and was succeeded by Jian Naijie, the former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education in Kenya, who was brought in to replace him. On 25 November 1976, he passed away from illness in Douglas, the capital of the Isle of Man, at the age of 66.
Biography Early life
Donohue was born on 3 September 1910 into an ordinary family in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom.Luzzatto (1960), p. 83."Births Dec 1910: DONOHUE, Peter ", FreeBMD, retrieved on 27 February 2015. In his early years, he was educated at Mexborough Secondary School (the predecessor of Mexborough Grammar School),The Colonial Office List (1958), p. 310. and subsequently attended King's College London, majoring in general science. With his outstanding academic performance, he graduated with a first-class honors Bachelor of Science degree in 1936.Calendar (1936), p. 561.The Colonial Office List (1951), p. 515. Aspiring to become a teacher after graduating from university, he chose to pursue further studies at the Institute of Education, University of London, where he obtained a Diploma in Education.
In 1937, Donohue joined the colonial government of Trinidad in the British West Indies, working as a teacher at Queen's Royal College, the oldest secondary school in the area. Following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he joined the Royal Air Force in 1941, participating in the war as a Flying Officer. He was demobilized from the Air Force after the end of World War II in 1946 and returned to teach at Queen's Royal College.
Education career in Hong Kong In May 1949, Donohue was transferred to the British colony of Hong Kong in the Far East. He worked as a senior teacher teaching mathematics at King George V School in Kowloon, which was still a government school at the time (it became a subsidized school under the English Schools Foundation in 1979). Donohue was promoted to principal of the school in 1950, but was soon transferred back to the Education Department the following year due to an acting appointment as a Senior Inspector of Schools, and officially became a Senior Education Officer in April 1952. He acted as Assistant Director of Education (Administration) twice from April to November 1954 and from January to September 1955, before receiving official promotion in September 1955. During his tenure as Assistant Director of Education, he served as Hong Kong's representative to a UNESCO seminar in 1957 and the Commonwealth Education Conference in 1959."Commonwealth Education Conference" (1959), 76W. Additionally, he served as the president of the Hong Kong Amateur Athletic Association.
In December 1959, Donohue succeeded the retiring Mao Qin to serve as Deputy Director of Education. Shortly thereafter, in August 1960, he returned to Britain for a long leave and was scheduled to return to Hong Kong in March of the following year."Deputy Director of Education Tang Luxiao returned to Britain via the US by ship yesterday" (28 August 1960) However, in January 1961, the Hong Kong Government announced that Donohue would succeed the retiring Gao Shiya as Director of Education."Tang Luxiao to return to Hong Kong in April to be promoted to Director of Education" (24 January 1961) Upon his return to Hong Kong, Donohue officially assumed the post of Director of Education on 29 April 1961."Director of Education Gao Shiya retired and returned to Britain yesterday morning" (30 April 1961) On 17 May, he concurrently became an official member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, and was later invited to serve as the honorary president of the Association of Private English Schools in June of the same year.
Director of Education of Hong Kong Expanding the scale of education
Due to the influx of a large number of refugees fleeing to Hong Kong from mainland China after World War II, coupled with the post-war baby boom that further pushed up the number of school-age children, the shortage of school places became one of the primary educational issues for the post-war Hong Kong Government.Fung and Chan (2010), p. 93.Fung and Chan (2010), p. 65. In fact, as early as the 1950s, the Education Department of the Hong Kong Government had significantly expanded primary school places in accordance with the recommendations of the *Fisher Report*. However, because the government failed to correspondingly expand secondary school places significantly, the bottleneck between primary and secondary school became even more prominent entering the 1960s.Fung and Chan (2010), p. 96. Taking the 1960 academic year as an example, the number of primary school students in Hong Kong was 427,691, while the number of secondary school students was only 88,495, far lower than the former.Hong Kong 1961 (1962), pp. 426-427.
In view of this, Donohue actively expanded primary and secondary education during his tenure,"Director of Education Tang Luxiao declared at the annual meeting that after the expansion of primary education, teacher training and adding secondary schools are current major issues" (18 October 1961) and increased the Hong Kong Government's main educational expenditure from HK$122 million in 1961 to HK$190 million in 1964. The number of various schools in Hong Kong increased from 1,918 in 1961 to 2,227 in 1964. A total of 269 new government, aided, subsidized, and private primary and secondary schools were established during this period, including examples such as Tsuen Wan Government Secondary School in Tsuen Wan and Bishop Hall Jubilee School in Kowloon City.Hong Kong 1964 (1965), pp. 310 & 313. During the same period, the total number of students in Hong Kong grew from 658,618 to 854,279, an increase of nearly 200,000 in three years; the number of teachers in Hong Kong also rose from 21,152 to 29,155. Addressing the shortage of primary and secondary school places, the number of primary school students during Donohue's tenure grew from 484,536 to 596,971, and the number of secondary school students also grew significantly from 106,477 to 177,680. However, due to the continuous rise in the number of school-age children, combined with the fact that the government had not yet implemented free education, the problem of insufficient school places persisted.
Apart from primary and secondary education, Donohue paid special attention to the development of tertiary education in Hong Kong. During his tenure, the government's funding allocated to the University of Hong Kong increased year by year from HK$8.26 million in 1961 to HK$19.02 million in 1964. In September 1961, Donohue separated the branch of Grantham Training College into an independent institution and named the new school Sir Robert Black Training College (later known as Sir Robert Black College of Education). As the third teacher training college in Hong Kong, its independence made it another major institution for training teachers to cope with the rapid increase in the number of primary and secondary schools."Director of Education Tang Luxiao announced the third teacher training college is named Sir Robert Black Training College" (28 October 1961)
Donohue also participated in the planning and establishment of Hong Kong's second university. In 1961, Governor Sir Robert Black proposed to actively explore the opening of a "Chinese University" in Hong Kong, and established a University Preparation Committee in June of the same year for preliminary planning.Wu Lunni Xia (1993), p. 211. The committee was chaired by Guan Zuyao (later Sir Cho-Yiu Kwan), who was then a non-official member of both the Executive and Legislative Councils, and Donohue was appointed as a member of the committee in his capacity as Director of Education. The following year, Black invited J. S. Fulton (later Lord Fulton), a senior British educational administrator, and others to Hong Kong to inspect the status of higher education. This resulted in a recommendation to merge three Chinese post-secondary colleges in Hong Kong (namely New Asia College, Chung Chi College, and United College) into a brand new Chinese University.Wu Lunni Xia (1993), pp. 22-23. After the recommendation was published in the *Fulton Report* in April 1963, the Hong Kong Government established a provisional council in June of the same year. Donohue and the then Secretary for Chinese Affairs, Mai Daoke, became the official representatives on the provisional council. In addition to providing assistance in preparing for the new school, they witnessed the official declaration of the establishment of The Chinese University of Hong Kong on 17 October of the same year.Wu Lunni Xia (1993), pp. 23-24.
Donohue supported the development of adult education and special education during his tenure.Rowe (1966), p. ix. He supported the Department of Extra-Mural Studies of the University of Hong Kong in borrowing government school premises to run adult courses, and assisted in identifying suitable part-time lecturers to align with the government's policy on adult education.Chiu and Cunich (2008), p. 65. In terms of special education, the number of students in special schools across Hong Kong during his tenure gradually increased from 691 in 1961 to 1,091, enabling more children and adolescents with special needs to receive appropriate education. Donohue also attended overseas education conferences multiple times to maintain contact and exchange ideas with educational authorities around the world. These visits included attending the Commonwealth Education Conference held in New Delhi, India, in January 1962,"Luo Zonggan went to India to attend the Commonwealth Education Conference; Tang Luxiao scheduled to leave Hong Kong the day after tomorrow to participate" (8 January 1962) and the annual meeting of Commonwealth Education Advisers held in Singapore in October of the same year.