E.—s

XIII

and the work of the school classes in agriculture and dairy-work has been supervised. A distinct improvement is to be noticed in the school-gardens throughout the district. In several schools the plots have been enlarged or moved to better positions. More attention is being paid to surface cultivation —a thing necessary in any soil, but especially so in the light sandy one of our district. Green-manuring is being practised to some extent, and I hope to see this general before long. Experiments in topdressing are being thoroughly carried out in some schools. It is hoped to extend the growing of fodder crops, especially in those schools taking dairy-work and agriculture. Good work in daily-work continues. Herd-testing is commonly carried out alike by girls and boys. Several new classes have been formed throughout the year, and more are expected. Before long, all our schools will be taking the combined course. An improvement is noticeable in the condition of the garden-tools :in practically every school they are kept clean and are regularly oiled. As regards apparatus, this is on the whole well looked after, but several schools require special cupboards for the valuable apparatus now supplied. The note-books are varied in character. In some schools admirable work is being done ; in a few others, however, the value of well-kept note-books is not fully appreciated. The garden note-book should be an index of the extent to which correlation is carried out in our rural schools. The school-grounds are receiving increasing attention. It is pleasing to note that the greatest improvement for the year has taken place at Manutahi. Hurleyville, and Maxwelltown, three of our smaller schools. The grounds at Eltham District High School will shortly be a credit to the town and district, as are those at Kaponga. lam afraid that in some cases the teachers do not get the support locally that such work deserves. At present one great drawback is the too common practice of turning the playground into a horse-paddock. At a few schools beehives are to be found in the gardens. As amongst our teachers are to be found the most advanced beekeepers in the district, f expect this practice to increase. Tn every case the children are keenly interested in the work. Elementary Science (Mr. Ryder). At the Marton, Taihape, Feilding, Pa tea, and Hawera District High Schools the subjects dealt with were physics, botany, chemistry, dairying, animal husbandry, practical mathematics, and surveying. The various classes have on the whole made very satisfactory progress, and in each of the schools mentioned there are pupils that consistently do careful and accurate work, frequently securing very good results indeed. The best work done has been in physics, chemistry, and dairying ; while in connection with practical mathematics and surveying some inaccuracy in calculation, and want of practice in geometrical drawing, have been noticeable. During the coining year all the secondary classes will have to be instructed in science subjects, so that there will be two divisions in each branch—a senior and a junior. This being so, some modification of the present arrangement may be necessary, in order that each division may receive due attention. Possibly the surveying and a portion of the practical mathematics might be taken by the permanent start. Woodwork (Mr. Clark. Mr. Anker, and Mr. Dandy). In the Wanganui and Northern Districts the classes have increased in number to 19, as against 13 in 1909. The attendance has been on the whole very regular, but in a few cases the roll-number declined in the latter part of the year through boys leaving school or being detained for special preparation for scholarship and Civil Service Examinations. There has been no radical change in the various courses of work in the standard classes, but a slight departure has been made in the direction of the construction of models having, so far as the pupil is concerned, a more obvious purpose than the manualtraining " exercises " that appeal to the teacher by reason of their pedagogic rather than their practical value. A keener interest has been evident, and the experiment will be carried a little further during 1911. More work of simple structural character will be involved in the experiment, and the number of models will be proportionately smaller. The difficulty here arises that there will be less practice in drawing, but this difficulty will be partly met by the supplementary course of solid geometrical drawing that for the last two years has been introduced in the classes. (The matter of drawing will also be referred to in a special memorandum dealing with the correlation of woodwork and the other school subjects.) The conduct of the pupils leaves nothing to be desired. Corporal punishment has had to be resorted to on only one or two occasions, and, considering that the conditions of the work are very different from those in the ordinary schoolroom, this fact says a great deal for the tone of the larger schools in the district under our charge. in the Northern District the Hawera and Patea District High Schools are the only ours that have adopted the rural course. The course in woodwork is necessarily of a very different nature from that of the manual-training classes. The practical work is of an entirely utilitarian character. The lessons in elementary building-construction, however, still retain the pedagogic aspect to some, extent, as s natural in classes not entirely technical in character. In this connection it may be pointed out that a set of models and apparatus illustrating the mechanical principles underlying building-construction would make the instruction more valuable, to the extent that it would be more intelligible. Satisfactory work was done at Palmerston, considering the poor quality of the tools in use. Better work will be expected when new ones arrive. The work of the classes at Feilding, Marton, and Taihape was also satisfactory and the general conduct good. Good work was done by the boys taking the special rural course at tin- Martini and Taihape District High Schools. At Feilding the average attendance during the past year has been 12 for 48 lessons. The work in this class, being the first year's course in agricultural work, has included the making of the following