Poverty Bay Standard. PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY & SATURDAY WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 1881.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 942, 11 May 1881, Page 2

Poverty Bay Standard.

PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY & SATURDAY WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 1881.

We xhall sell to no man Justice or Right We shall deng to no man Justice or Right We shall defer to ho man Justice or Right.

The Annual Report of the Education Board of Hawke’s Bay, with returns

and statistics, compiled by the Inspector —Mr H. Hill—for the year ending 31st December, 1880, is now in circulation ; and we have to acknowledge the receipt of a copy at this office. It is a bulky volume of 54 pages’ of closely printed reading and tabulated matter, and, possibly, for the purpose for which it. is circulated, will afford much interesting and useful information. Space will not permit of our doing more than culling such excerpt a from it, as properly come under those heads, for, when we say that Mr. Hill’s duties extend over no less than 29 school districts, including 3(5 school buildings, and having under his supervision 85 teachers, and sewing mistresses, and 3085 pupils, the magnitude of the work he has annually to perform will be pretty well appreciated.

In the Gisborne School there are seven teachers, receiving yearly salaries amounting to £673 19s, exclusive of the master’s residence. There are 322 scholars on the school roll, with an average weekly attendance for the December quarter of 239, or 231.75 for the whole year ; 179 were admitted during the year, and 136 left the school. AVe notice in the foregoing figures, and in most others in the lie* port, that Gisborne stands second only to Napier in everything pertaining to its school, which, considering the relative sizes of the two places, is far from unsatisfactory. The genetai progress of the pupils during the year in the Gisborne School Mr I [ill describes as being “fairly good.” Of the other schools in this district the report speaks in commendation, except the Arai, which is unsatisfactory,’ and Waerenga-a-luka which is “ indifferent.” 1 he receipts of the Gisborne School t ommittee for the year were £95 Os Id agamst an expenditure of £lOl 10s 6d leaving a debit balance 'of £9 ]os 2d. ' I he General Board account shewed receipts for the year of £20,02S 7s 6d. with a credit balance of £2955 ]n s 11.1 on the 3lsf of December. On the question of attendance, Milium makes the fidlowing forcible remarks. to which, and the general questions treated of in the Report, we pro- I |ios( to add a few remarks in our next I issue ;—

Irregular attendance has been, and still ,’ s perhaps, the greatest hindrance to the prom-ess of education in the distiict. With all’ the

opportunities now afforded to parents in the various School Districts to send their children to school, and with the power in the hands of School Committees of enforcing attendance for at least half the school vein- if found necessary, there exists a state of affairs which I can only characterise as disgraceful. In 1879, w.ibn on my visit of inspection, several teachers drew mA attention when examining their registers to the irregularity of a large number of their children, but I inferred it was iii consequence of the building operations which were then general throughout the district, and 1 suggested that the attendance would probably improve on the completion of the school-houses, bpt on comparing the attendance results for 1879 and 18 0, I find that irregularity among the children is growing worse and worse. In England, where school fees are generally paid, I find that during the year 1879-80, 73 per cent, of the pupils examined in standards and actually 63 per cent, of the 3.710,883 children on the school registers between the ages of 3 and 13 years, made at least 250 attendances each, yet here with.a free system of education, where nothing is required from parents except for-them to send their children to school, there is the spectacle of 26 per cent, of the children on the school registers staying away three times out of every four that the schools are open, and another twenty per cent, staving away two out of every four times. It is no use for me to expect good results an'l satisfactory progress, either in the general management of the schools, or in the annual examinations, unless something is done to alter this wretched state of affairs.