When the war ended in 1945, school enrolment was under 50,000. School buildings lay in ruins,
equipment had been destroyed, textbooks were almost non-existent and there was a serious shortage of
trained teachers. The process of rehabilitating the school system was laborious and difficult. The enormous
growth of the school system since then (it now caters for about 1.4 million pupils) began in 1949, when
immigrants from China began to arrive in tens of thousands. With a predominantly young and rapidly
growing population it was clear that a massive school building programme was called for and that the
foremost priority was the development of primary education and teacher training. Extensive government
building programmes were launched in the 1950s: at their peak about 45,000 primary school places were
being added each year. In 1965 the White Paper Education Policy announced the reorganisation of the
structure of primary and secondary education, set universal primary education as the immediate aim and
established the principle that expansion of school education would henceforth be through the aided sector
wherever possible.