ANNUAL REPORT OF THE INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 158, 6 July 1877, Page 5

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS.

.; ■ _;■■■". ■■•'". •• July sth, 1877. < c To the Chairman of the Education Board op ; THE DISTKICT OF NELSON : Sir,— . I have the honor to lay before you my Annual : on the Nelson Public Schools, which includes : tlie period between July 1, 1876, and Juno 30, 1877. j : The names of 4958 .children appear ou the. rolls for j past twelve months, being an increase of 45 on the j 'previous, year's, numbers. Seventy-three schools are: entered on ' the' Return, ' three of which — Waipuna, j South - Spit, and Karamea — are <at present : closed, i The average rate of attendance — 73 per cent— is very j "fair, wlien the unavoidable .deductions, on account of! "sickness, bad roads,. and, wet weather arc,. considered. | the number of those who have remained. at ' 'school VfteT they were twelve years old — -982-r-is still fair below' what "it ought to be, I have had the satisfac- i iion of recording 118 more names under this head than \ .were set down in last year's returns. , , . . j ] The usual summary, showing what progress is being made in each "subject, and how it is being taught, will .serve to make the statistics given in .the Auuual Return adore intelligible.. ..___, . . , . \\ X am .ajvarei 'tnatf. the simple : method of tabulatjng Results," initiated. by my predecessor more- than twenty years^ago,' and wnich I have .retained^.: with ■ slight alterations, until "now, might be improved upon in several respects ; the division of reading, especially, into three instead of six grades, being defective. I have come to the conclusion, however, that in view of impending changes^ which may affect the whoLe.system 6f examinatib^ns, '.It ; jvouid" be "unwise to. alter a plan |Ka^ whatever mSy be its defects, lia, 1 * the great imerit of enabling the 'reader iio compajre readily the present with. ; the past, state of \ each [school since its opening. And this is an advantage not to be lightly abandoned by" an examiner, or by those for whose information he imtes. "Nor do I think it possible, by means of the most elaborate system of tabulated statements, or,, by any arrangement of figures, carried out to any number of decimal places, to give such a picture of a school as will not require .to be supplemented and '., modified by a ■Written estimate, however short. , . ■ . ".. So many factors must enter into such an estimate before justice can be meted out to each teacher,, that life mosVcafefully devised array of figiu'es, taken alone, may be t absolutely misleading. For instance, not only the age!. of each scholar, but his school age, thVs is, the 1 finie he', has "actually spent in the schoolropniy must^be taken into.accpuiit.'" It is also necessary to know how long.a.teaclier has been' at', work in. his school, and hi what's'Cafe'lie fbiind it j while such. ..essential matters as the general toiie and /discipline of a school cannot wejrbe : represented by figures at all. . ;„' \ v ,' r Ontß.e wh"6le,"I J d6 not apprelienil that an ordinai'ily careful reader will find much difficulty in gatheringftqin "my tables and report^ taken togcthei\, as, much as" is- really' worth kriowing. Exquisitely nice adj.ust-. ments.are. put. of place in, so simple a' machine as the Nelson system' of. primar} r education. ..." , \]Jteadiiig.—il\e number of readers marked as "good,',' that is,| >vho'can read an ordinaij passage of, prose with r t6lef able .fluency, and expression— l 262— is slightly Vin ' e^ess of ; th^lr given' in ! last gear's return^ ; , , .T.his,^ mp's't- important^ subject is. still generally well taught; Drawling r and ."whining have, been fairly laugheci but of most of diir' schools, and the remarkable absence of provincialism has been noticed by more than one competent critic from other colonies. . . Writing!— -In the majority of our schools writing is ; carefully r and' successfully taught. The schools on the West Coast, however, with, one or two exceptions, 1 still lag most iiriaccbnntably behind the rest in this respect. • In 16 schools,, attended by 700 . children, tliere are 0n1y, 53. good writej'S ; , scarcely mere . than' ha-lf "as" many'as a'ppbaT on the return for. the Ist division, of Hardy-street G-irls' Scliool, with 'only,-. 65 scHdlarsi., .'■; ". .'.",." '.■,',- . .. . „ , .- -,'• _ '...- "iAritMieiic.—ivL tlie highest grade of arithmetic there are 60 more passes this year than there were last year, but iii the" lowest grade, which goes only as far as simple division, there is a serious falling off, not more than 366 havi.ng.su'cceeded in 1877 as against 758 in 1876.. This state of things' clearly shows that in a largo proportion sf our schools the. teaching of arithmetic is top ambitious. Had the children been properly grounded, no such : list, of failures would have been possible.- In seyerarsclibpls, 'both in town and country, where the. teachers have laid a! good foundation, and have taken an^a'ccurate'measure'bf the powers' of their ; scholai;s,. not a, single .scholar has- failed to pass w,ith ease, /it must be boriie in too, that in my .examiaations£o{; arit^nieti.c"tlie! |eaphpr is' at liberty to select whi^hr. eve'r'grade' lie. .li^s'^not" io^ly for each , class, r Wt,'for . eacll/member' of.&- class^ all , that , I , fisk ' being that a certain prbportton pf the work' taken up shall be done, correctly!- My /object in allowing this unusual latitude is to' discourage cramming. Grammar.—- This subject is much better taught than it was a year ago/ when the text books used were too bulk^'and top difficult for, young scholars, and when nutny J of our teachers tried to teach more than could well be digested. The , only text book that ■vyU 1 - 'be issued this, year is, English Grammar for BeginnerS,"""'a rseu^ibly-written little work, . of great practical value, comprisiug as it does within the compass of sixty pages' all that children who attend jprimary schools need learn of English grammar, including the analysis of sentences; ". /■>- ",'.'■ oedgmpJty}~ Although, the 'method of. teaching geography 'now pursued is more rational and more interesting than it was in- bygone times,' there is still room for improvement. Following the plan laid down in Phillips' Colonial Geography, a work written expressly for New Zealand schools, our teachers now very properly start from this country as a centre, and pay- considerable attention to the geography of the basin of the -Pacific. Map-drawing and collective lessons; before the wall maps are also common. I find, however, that the relative -positions of even wellknown places are ill understood, many of the children, for instance,- being quite at a loss to explain what course would be taken by a ship leaving Nelson for Sydney, "south" and "north-east" being among the answers' frequently given. History. — The teaching of history is now confined, as it ought to be, to the upper classes in our most advanced schools. Although few, even of those, know more than the barest outlines of so vast a subject, I should be sorry to, see it entirely excluded from our school course, were it only, because it gives quite a different kind of reading from that found in our ordinary-, class books, and thus helps to relieve the, intolerable monotonousness of going over the same unvaried round of lesssons. For the same reason I thitik it advisable to make an entire change iv the reading books, however excellent they may be, at least once in every five years. Spelling.— Good spelling, formerly the exception, has for the last two years been the rule with us. In our best schools it is the practice to combine a writino 1 and a dictation exercise, with the best results, as the numerous fairly written and correctly spelt exercise books submitted to me testify. Great attention is now being paid also to the proper formation and arrangement of figures, points that will be found of some importance in after life,

Discipline. — Except in about half a dozen instances, and those not very glaring, the discipline of our schools is quite as good as ought reasonably to be expected. With very little of the parade of class T drill, so imposing to a visitor, and with hardly any ukraeessfu-y^Urshness, our teachers contrive, on the whole, Ho 'ijjresqrye such an amount of order as enables the work of' their (schools to bo carried on without serious 'disturbance or ; loss of time. A school is not a penal such a system of repression as wojild cornel absolute silence throughout the schoolday is Tiardly~ worth^introducing into institutions where more than a fourth of the inmates are under seven years old.