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(Circular memorandum.) Education Department, Wellington, 14th August, 1901. The Secretary, Education Board, I forwaed herewith a supply of forms of certificate for issue to teachers entitled to attend trainingclasses approved by the Board. Please cancel the forms sent previously. Tickets will be issued on Friday or Saturday, available for return either on Saturday or on Monday, as may be necessary in each case. As indicated on the form of certificate, Stationmasters will forward their schedules (see form marked * enclosed herewith), supported by certificates, to you for approval. Although you may not perhaps be in a position to certify to the absolute correctness of the schedules, yet it is necessary, of course, that you should certify on the schedules that the teachers to whom the tickets were issued, as shown thereon, were teachers whose names were on the roll of classes approved by your Board. For audit purposes, however, it will be necessary that the Railway Department's accounts for the amounts shown in the schedules should be finally certified to as correct, as far as it is possible to do so. In order to comply with this requirement the certificates issued to teachers will be recorded in this office for comparison with the registers ; and, so far as this is concerned, the checking of the attendances at technical classes will be done at the end of each year when the registers have been received in this office. It would probably save time and trouble to your Board if this Department also undertook to check the certificates (if any) issued for attendance at drill or other classes approved by your Board. If this proposal is agreed to, please forward the registers to this office at the end of the last term in each year. Please reply. G. Hogbbn, Secretary for Education.

Education Department, Wellington, 23rd October, 1901. The Secretary to the Education Board, It not infrequently happens that in the event of the destruction of a school by fire the information which the Board obtains with regard to the occurrence is confined to a report by the teacher or the Committee, supplemented perhaps by one from the police. The Minister directs me to bring under the notice of Boards the desirability, as a general rule, of their having an independent inquiry made in every case of the loss or damage of school property by fire. The evidence taken at any such inquiry, and the report thereon, after having been duly considered by the Board, should be forwarded for the information of the Department. E. 0. Gibbes, Assistant Secretary.

Education Department, Wellington, 12th November, 1901. (Circular memorandum to Secretaries to Education Boards.) As you are aware, the passing of the Public-School Teachers' Salaries Act will alter the basis of the principal payments made to Education Boards, and it is desirable that the work entailed by the Act upon the officers of the various Boards and of this Department shall, with a due regard to efficiency, be kept within as narrow limits as possible. There are other matters in which it is advisable that the routine work should be made as simple as it can be made. Such matters are the recognition of instructors and the sending-in of claims under " The Manual and Technical Instruction Act, 1900," district high school grants, the checking of railway tickets for drill and technical classes, &c. It has been suggested that there should be a conference between the Department and Secretaries of Education Boards, presided over by the Secretary for Education, to discuss details with the above objects in view, and I have to ask you whether your Board will be willing that its Secretary should attend such a conference, to be held in Wellington, say, about the second week in December. It is not proposed that questions of policy should be discussed, but the great saving of work to the Boards and the Department that would, it is hoped, be the result of the conference, affords sufficient reason for holding it. I should be glad to receive a reply with the least possible delay, as arrangements will have to be made in good time. . G. Hogben.

Authority : John Mackay, Government Printer, Wellington.—l9o2.