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The children entering on the junior-high-school course continue their general education in common, but, while avoiding any danger of too early specialization, a portion of their time is devoted to supplementary courses of elementary secondary education, such as the general or academic course, or the agricultural, mechanical, commercial, or domestic-science courses. Every facility is provided for trying out pupils in. these courses so that they may find where their special aptitudes lie. Children who enter upon this course and who do not remain at school beyond the age of fourteen or fifteen will at least have passed through a junior course of secondary instruction with some definite objective and with some real benefit, whereas under the present system a pupil of the same age would have spent two years in the Eifth and Sixth Standards and only one year at a secondary or technical school, where, after struggling through the elements of advanced subjects, he would leave school before he could derive any real benefit. At the conclusion of the junior-high-school course pupils can qualify for senior free places at secondary or technical schools in the same way as at present, the qualification being based on the coarse of study they have followed. Thus the child's education can be continuous right through the advanced forms of the secondary or technical schools. Though many other reasons might be advanced for the establishment of the junior-high-school course, the two that have been mentioned are alone sufficient to warrant the change being made. Arrangements are being made for the establishment of a junior-high-school course at Whangarei, and it is hoped that the system will soon be in full workingorder. In Auckland the Kowhai Junior High School is a separate institution under its own Principal, and it contains about nine hundred pupils and meets the needs of three adjacent schools; while at the same time the four high schools and the technical school in Auckland are full, except one, which will be well filled next January. To meet the needs of our four largest cities several separate junior high schools of this type would need to be established. For this reason it would not be possible or desirable to attach a junior-high-school course to any of the existing secondary or technical schools in the four main centres. In towns of from five thousand to about fifteen thousand inhabitants the junior-high-school course must necessarily be attached to the existing secondary school, since it would not be possible to maintain the separate junior high school and separate senior high schools with adequate staffs owing to the smallness of the numbers. Arrangements are well in hand also for the establishment of a junior-high-school course in a small town, where there is a small mixed secondary school. It is expected that not only will the pupils in the junior high school thus receive the benefit of the modern arrangement, but the high school or the technical, high school, as the case may be, will be strengthened and made more efficient right up to the sixth-form stage. It is hoped to establish one more type on the junior-high-school plan in a district where at present there is only a district high school with perhaps one or two teachers in the secondary department and a small number of scholars. In this case the junior-high-school course will be attached to the existing primary school and attended by children from neighbouring schools. It is hoped that this plan will have the effect of considerably strengthening a number of secondary departments of district high schools where at present the number of pupils and teachers is too small to allow for effective staffing and organization. As opportunity and the circumstances of finance make it possible, it is hoped that these four types of the junior-high-school course, together with any other that may prove to be desirable, will be developed in all parts of New Zealand, so that the time will come when, throughout the Dominion, the primary-school course will branch off into the junior-secondary-school course at about the present Fourth Standard and when the pupils are about twelve years of age. The changes would, of course, be made only after consultation with the Education Board and School Committees affected and with every consideration and every safeguard against hardship in any direction. Every care would be taken to