E.—IE

5

the proper answer to the question whether you ought to give aid to promising students to continue their studies out of the colony. If you come to the individual parent and say, " Are you going to prevent your son from going elsewhere to get what there is no institution to provide in this colony?" if we put that question to ourselves as parents, I think there can be only one answer. Of course, we can take any safeguards we like against abuse of the advantages given, but 1 am expressing my own individual view, which may or may not be the official view, when I say I hope there will soon be some travelling scholarships—a few at all events-to supply one gap which is left, and which should not be left, in the educational system of a colony like ours. I have made an omission I ought to supply at once. I ought to have read the letter of invitation, which you have all seen. Will you kindly take it as read? I want to allude, however, to one or two of the topics named on the list, and to refer to other points not named there that may be worthy of consideration. 1 shall low go rapidly through the different stages of our educational system to which I have referred, and call attention in as few words as possible to what has been done since we last met, and to some things that remain to be done. Since our last meeting, I am glad to say, the Legislature has given higher salaries to teachers and pupil-teachers, so affording an incentive which we cannot overlook, and which, I am quite sure, will lead to an improvement in the profession. We may not have reached the ideal in salaries that we should like to see, but the new scale was a step forward. Then there was the abolition of average attendance as a means of adjusting salaries. Some people do not appear quite to understand that the last Act effected the practical abolition of average attendance as the direct measure of salaries. The practical effect of the present Act and regulations has been to do that, but there is an indirect way in which the average attendance will affect salaries whatever be your system. No system I have ever seen would pay a principal of a large school a lower salary than the principal of a small school. I have never seen such a system, and I do not know that one is in existence that would do that in effect. It is thus only in an indirect way that the size of a school will affect the salary of the teacher; the average attendance now is nothing more than an index of the size of the school, and a man is secure against the results of a fall in the average attendance for two years or more, which would give time enough to promote him if we had a better system of promotion. I think, that is an advance—it was a difficult matter in a system such as ours to secure even that degree of advance. There are a good many people who talk about the reclassification of teachers as if the problem was just as easy in this colony as where all schools and teachers are under a central department. Whatever may be the advantage of an arrangement like that, we have none of us any desire for it in New Zealand. lam glad to say that there are now four training colleges instead of two, and that they have more funds; the increase of the available funds has enabled them completely to recast their organization, and I am quite sure, gentlemen, we can congratulate ourselves that the teachers of the future will have better opportunities_ of being trained in this colony than those of the past have had. —(Applause.) I am glad also to say that the Teachers' Superannuation Act has now been in force for over a year, and has more than realised the best hopes of those who helped to carry it through. The number of members is, I think, over three thousand, and the revenue is larger than it was anticipated at the time it would be. I made an estimate that the annual income would be £32,000, and I think it is about £32,300 or £32,400, so that the revenue is fully up to what we expected it would be, even though some members did not join early in the year. I think that is another thing that will help to improve the profession; it is already inducing many men of ability who would otherwise not have come into the profession to think seriously that it is a profession worth coming into. In connection with the primary schools, one of the most important things I think we ought to consider is the next step forward in regard to the pupil-teacher system. —(A voice: "Abolish it.") W T ith the suggestion to abolish it as at present existing lam heartily in sympathy, but some period of probation for teachers we must have. . The question is what is the next step forward. The question of money is involved, and if this Conference has a recommendation to make, it would be best, I think, to make a recommendation to the Minister of a kind that the Legislature would be prepared to find the money for. I have not been authorised by the Minister to make any suggestion, so that I am expressing entirely my own individual and personal opinion, and not an official opinion; but I suggest to you, gentlemen—l do not say it is the best thing—that the next step is to go rather further in the direction indicated by the last Teachers' Salaries Act and the regulations thereunder, which held out inducements for pupil-teachers to come into the profession, if possessing certain qualifications, with the rank and salaries at entrance of second- or third-year pupil-teachers. We could now carry these ideas further by requiring everybody to be qualified to enter as a pupil-teacher of the third year; we could do that and reduce their working-time to half a day. I think that would be a very considerable step forward. —(Hear, hear.)—lt would maintain also that continuity with the past that we all like to see. Of course, under such a system we should have to increase the number of adult teachers. I do not know whether you all realise that also means other increases right up the rest of the scale. Obviously we could not put a large number of teachers at the bottom of the scale at £80 or £90 a year in place of pupil-teachers. Promotion would be too slow. Ido not wish to hold up before you the financial bogey, but it would mean a certain amount of increased expenditure—it would be better for us to realise that when we make a recommendation. Still, in spite of the increased expenditure involved, I think we ought seriously to consider the desirability of making somewhat easier the conditions under which the young people who are being trained for'teachers have to work and live.—(Hear, hear.) —It would lead to a greater efficiency in the profession, and, if we can do that without too large an expenditure, I feel quite sure speaking only personally and unofficially—the Minister and the House would listen to such a proposal with great attention. There are various other questions to be considered; for instance, the question of the conveyance of children in scattered districts to centralised schools; that is a very difficult question—l do not