E.—IB

10

as to the quality of elementary work. Head-teachers might devote more time to showing pupilteachers how to give class lessons and how to produce the best results, and I recommend head-teachers to keep a record for the year of the model lessons given by them in the presence of any subordinates. Pupil-teachers should prepare their lessons with notes; and they should bo required to submit their notes to the head-teacher. Head-teachers are not required to put up with the continued inefficient or careless work of their subordinates, and I recommend them to report such cases from time to time to the Board. At present this is hardly ever done. It is not until a serious breakdown occurs at an examination that the work of an assistant-teacher appears to be seriously found fault with. Assistants, including pupil-teachers, should share all the duties of management, such as the making-up of returns and keeping order in the playgrounds. Intellectual Teaching.—ln August last I addressed a circular to teachers calling their attention to the importance of aiming at a better class of results than the average of those hitherto produced, by setting their educational work on a basis of broader culture. I pointed out that much of the subjectmatter generally taught in primary schools affords little scope for tbat intellectual training which is best imparted by inductive teaching. Teachers were recommended to use every available means of rendering the instruction throughout their schools less monotonous in character, less an exercise requiring mere imitation or the remembering of sets of dry facts, and more a process of mind-building and thought-forming. I stated that it would be my duty to discriminate clearly between a school which is intellectually taught, and one which merely imparted routine instruction of an uneducative order. I was aware that a large part of the daily labour of the teacher must necessarily be given to the patient teaching of mechanical reading, spelling, writing, and process-work in arithmetic. Still, every teacher must realize the fact that, unless the interest of his pupils has been awakened during at least some portion of every day's work, and unless the various faculties of their minds have been stimulated, the results are of little educative value. At the risk of being tedious on this important subject, I must point out that the standard schedule must not be taken as a full picture of the educational work of a year. The teacher, who is skilled in his profession, will look upon the programme as an artist would on 'a picture in its first stages, when only the boldest outlines have been sketched in and the broadest effects produced. It remains for him skillfully to fill in the nicest details, and to give the picture its finishing touches. The standards are merely the rough outlines, which the teacher is to fill in, and give effect to, according to his skill and conception. There is really nothing in a system of standards which need cramp the efforts of an artist, and nothing which need hinder him in his teaching from taking an original and broad view of the work before him. Further, I may say, no teacher will succeed well who allows himself to feel thus fettered. District High Schools. —Although it is desirable that provision should be made for grammarschool teaching as following a course of elementary instruction, I am of opinion that any attempt to tack secondary education on to primary will prove a failure. The organization, system, and teaching power of a primary school are often quite unsuited for a secondary school. But a more serious objection is a practical one, for how can the best teaching power be spared from primary work, say, one-fourth of the school time ; and what advantage will it be to give a little extra instruction to a handful of children, while the whole school not only suffers the loss of its head and of its most able teacher, but the whole organization for primary work is upset ? The only way in which secondary work can be satisfactorily done in connection with primary schools is by the teachers, who are competent for the work, forming classes outside the primary school hours. And in the City of Wellington, where alone in this district there is much field for organizing secondary education, what a waste of time it would be for all the six or seven head-teachers—assuming that they are fitted for the work—to be engaged a portion of every day in taking small classes in a small way, when all these small classes could be much better taught in one school owing to better classification, increased emulation, and special appliances, to say nothing of teaching power; and the time of the pupils would be fully occupied in purely secondary work. My plan with regard to secondary education would be to allow a competent teacher to charge fees in country schools, where the work was done outside primary school hours ; and in Wellington to establish an unpretentious grammar school for boys and one for girls, in which the pupils would pay a moderate fee, and to which they would not be admitted until they had passed Standard IV. Septennial.—Seven years have now passed since the first standard examination was made ; also the first school age has expired, and all or nearly all the children then attending school are now engaged in the more arduous duties of life. A brief retrospect can hardly fail to be interesting to those who watch the progress of education. On the first introduction of standards, 32 public schools were nominally established in the present district. The State owned no school property in the city—not a rood of land, not a building of any kind. Two Church of England schools, 2 Roman Catholic schools, and an infant school, the last held in the lean-to of a cottage in Hopper Street, were supported by the Board. These 5 schools presented GB4 children for examination, of whom 219 were classed in old Standard 1., and 63 in Standard 11. In the Porirua and Hutt Districts, including 4 half-time schools, there were 1G schools held in buildings all of which have since been rebuilt or largely added to, except Porirua, Wainuiomata, and the one at Taita, which, at that time, was the best public school building in the whole educational district. These 16 schools presented 563 children, of whom 153 were classed in Standard 1., and 59 in Standard 11. Besides these, there wore, including 2 half-time schools, 11 in the Wairarapa, all held in very poor buildings, that at Tauherenikau being about the best and the only one now remaining in use. These 11 schools presented 404 children, of whom 127 «vere classed in Standard 1., and 43 in Standard 11. Thus, in seven years, the attendance at the examination increased from 1,651 to 5,488 children. I have, &c, Eobeet Lee, The Chairman, Wellington Education Board. Inspector of Schools,