15

E.—l2

The scale of payment for country classes should be considerably increased. The system of payment for instruction in technical subjects should be revised in the direction of making the payments depend less upon capitation, and thus give the teachers more stable salaries and the managing body security of finance. By the abolition of district high schools and the diversion of free-place pupils from secondary schools, the attendance at technical schools should increase and their permanence be secured. It should be possible for the Boards to obtain the services of the Agricultural Department's Instructors who could institute occasional classes in veterinary science, wool-classing, bee-keeping, fruitgrowing, &c. The significance and importance of the fact that in our technical schools the girls greatly outnumber the boys in the commercial classes should not be lost sight of by the community. Secondary schools should not provide for the teaching of shorthand, typewriting, and book-keeping, except the elements of the last-named subject. The evidence of those in charge of the trade classes in the various technical schools points unmistakably to the advantage of establishing a standard or Dominion examination in the work of such classes. To that end it is suggested that the Council of Education should frame regulations for the issue of certificate of efficient instruction to those apprentices who qualify in such instruction. In the case of plumbers' apprentices, it is especially necessary that the certificate of efficiency and competency to practise as a journeyman that is granted by any one technical college should be recognized throughout the Dominion, and be accepted by the local bodies that register or license plumbers. If this standard examination be established the examinations under the auspices of the London and City Guilds'* Institute could be dispensed with. The need for a uniform examination in respect to the teaching of arts and crafts within the Dominion has been emphasized by a number of witnesses, and it is recommended that this proposal be given effect to. Facilities should be afforded for the exhibition at the chief centres of the best work done at such examination. Continuation Classes. That so many pupils leave school without passing Standard VI justifies the introduction of compulsory continuation classes in technical schools. The provision made in the Act of 1910, defining " young person " as a boy or girl over the age of fourteen years, but not over the age of seventeen years, and the general provision that no capitation shall be paid in respect to technical-school pupils under fourteen years of age, do not take into account the fact that so many pupils leave school before they attain the age of fourteen years. The onus of proving that employees are exempt from attendance at compulsory classes should be placed upon the employer. In respect to attendance at technical schools for vocational instruction, it is necessary to make provision that in certain trades apprentices or youths under twenty-one years of age be allowed time off during the week to attend technical schools. Overlapping. Your Commission has made'extensive inquiries into the matter of overlapping and duplication of school and college courses, and is of opinion that on the whole this evil is not at present greatly in evidence ; it is creeping in to some extent when district high schools, technical day schools, and high schools exist in the same locality. In such cases the district high school should be closed, and the work at present undertaken therein divided between the high schools and the technical day schools. Education Boards should be granted the power of closing existing district high schools whenever the work now being carried on therein can be undertaken equally well in neighbouring educational institutions. A certain amount of overlapping exists as between art schools and technical schools, but it is difficult to see how this is to be avoided, unless all art schools receiving Government grants are placed under the control of the proposed School Boards or Education Boards. Trend of Education. One of the main, if not the chief, defects of the present scheme of education is its tendency to make the public examinations the objective, the result being that the ranks of clerks (in the case of men) and of typistes (in the case of young women) are