EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 196, 21 September 1900, Page 4

EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT.

, 1 ANNUAL REPORT. The 23rd annual report of the Minister ii Education, being that for the year 1899, was presented to Parliament on Thursday, With reference to pupils schoolß, the report states:—The working average—which has been since 1893 the basis upon which the capitation grants are paid to educational boards—shows for the year 1899 a further falling-off from the number previously reached. For the year 18D7 the working average was 112,328; in rß9Bitwas 111,636; while last year it reached Jonly 110,316, or 1,320 less than the year before. In the calculation of the working average for a given school are omitted all attendances on those half-days on which less than half the pupils on the roll are present; on the other hand, the strict average for any school-is found by including all the half-days on which the school is open ; the strict average for 'the 'i2-months ended the 31st December, 1889, was 108,405, or 1,851 less than for the previous year. The average of the weekly roll numbers throughout the year was, however, only 241 less than for the year 1898, the figures being 133,540 for 1899, as against 133,782. for 1898. . The returns finished to the Regis-yar-Gteherai appears to show that the number on the rolls of private schools, including Roman Catholic schools increased dining 1899 by 513 pupils; the number in public secondary schools increased by 17. Taking the public primary and secondaiy schools, and private schools of all kinds, we have therefore a net increase of 288 on the rolls. Now,,allowing -for deaths of children under five, the number of births in the colony during 1893 and 1g94 would make us expect an increased roll-number in 1899 of about 300 children. The agreement between these figures is so close as to lead us to the conclusion that there is little or no increase in the number of children whose names do not appear on any school roll. The leakage in the yearly | average attendance is due, in short, not to the rolls, but to the irregular attendance. : Expressing the strict average attendance for the year as a percentage of the average weekly roll-numbers, we get 81*2 per cent, as representing* the regularity of attendance during the year. This is lower than the corresponding figures for any year since 1894. In 1897 the average attendance reached 82-9 per cent, of the roll, and ' in 1898, when there was considerable amount of sickness among children, 82 - 4 per cent. It is not easy to assign with any • degree of certainty the true causes of the great falling-off in average attendance as compared with the slight I decrease in the roll-numbers. There does not appear to have been any unusual amount of sickness among

children, or any general prevalence of bad weather during the year, Whatever may have been the cause, the increase in the amount of irregular attendance seems to call for attention on the part of all concerned; there is little doubt that a certain extent it is preventable. A comparison of the table for the two year, 1898 and 1899, shows that average number in attendance at the schools during 1899 was smaller than during 1898 in every education district except Wellington, Marlborough and Southland, the decrease being most marked in North Canterbury and Gtago, which are accountable respectively for 792 and 788 out of the total decrease of 1851 mentioned above. There was a decline in the regularity of attendance in eight out of the thirteen districts; it was most pronounced in Taranaki, Hawke's Bay North Canterbury and South Canterbury, In five districts the attendance was better than in 1898, the greatest improvement in this respect taking place in Grey and Westland in fact, the high figures attained in those two small districts are worthy of note. In Grey the average attendance reached 87*2 per cent., of the average roll-number, and in Westland 85-7 per cent, It is only fair to remark that the average attendance for the fourth quarter of 1899 shows a much smaller falling-off from that of the fourth quarter of 1898 that is shown in a comparison of the other quarters of these two years; this fact may raise the suspicion that the exceptional causes operating to produce, a low attendance during 1898 were still effective in the first three-quarters of 1899. Of the total numbers on the rolls on the day of examination those passing standard 1, formed 11 per cent,, standard 11.11.4 per cent.; 111., 10.6 ; IV 9.5; N., 7.3; VI., 4.1. The number of schools open at the end of 1899 was 1645, or 21 more than were open is December 1898. The total average attendance for the fourth quarter of 1899 was 107,066, against 107,204 in the corresponding quarter of 1898. The mean average attendance per school, therefore, fell from 66.4 to [65.1.