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REPORT. INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. During the past year the usual activities in the various spheres of education, ranging from the kindergarten to the University, have been well maintained, and, in addition, substantial progress has been made through the extension or initiation of a number of reforms and improvements in the efficiency, management, and equipment of the several types of schools. While each of the changes referred to brings to education an inherent benefit, it has to be recognized that reforms and advances in educational administration, practice, and equipment, have a stimulative and encouraging effect, apart from and far beyond the actual matter which each change affects. Provided always the changes are inherently valuable, they convey to teachers and others a sense of growth, adaption, and development which are the marks of an active organism directly related to life. Of all the activities and public services for which the Government is responsible, education in particular must always give scope and expression to this vital factor of development. Our various types of schools have the distinctive advantage and responsibility of dealing not only with human life but with young human lives in the making. To a great extent also the schools are, on the one hand, the sphere in which the changing spirit of the age and of the race makes a deep and lasting impression, while, on the other hand, they are the seed-ground of influences and tendencies which will express themselves in a profound and far-reaching manner on the growth of our national life and ideals. The schools must therefore not only express and reflect the evolution of life and thought from generation to generation, but must themselves have as a distinctive characteristic a spirit of hope, optimism, inspiration, adaptivity, and adventure ; and it is gratifying to find that teachers of all grades are to an ever-increasing degree becoming more versatile, original, and stimulative in their training of the children and students under their charge. Special and separate mention will presently be made of improvements and developments made during the past year, such as new buildings, remodelling of old buildings, improved lighting, ventilation, and equipment, more liberal staffing, establishment of new types of schools, special provision for the improvement of the more humanistic and aesthetic phases or subjects of education. Steps have also been taken to investigate in a comprehensive manner the present condition of postprimary and university education, in order to survey the trend of the many avenues of advance in education recently opened up and to find the direction which our future progress should take. Not every individual school or teacher has been directly affected by the changes just referred to, but these changes should have the indirect effect of indicating to all concerned that education is in a continuous state of flux, and that our system is a living, growing organism, and not a piece of machinery. It is therefore hoped that the activities and changes of the past year, however incomplete they may be, will serve the greater purpose of fostering and encouraging a spirit of progressiveness. LEGISLATION. The Education Act of 1924 contained, in addition to certain machinery clauses designed to facilitate the working of the principal Act, a number of new provisions to meet new conditions arising out of various developments in the education system. Chief among these are— (a.) Junior High Schools. The amending Act authorized the establishment of junior high schools of various types. Only the broadest outline was prescribed by legislation, it being considered necessary to|leavefthe way openjtofmake such arrangements in each particular locality as its special circumstances might require. Up to the present four junior high schools have beenfestablished, though there are numerous applications from other districts under consideration. [The [Kowhai Junior High School, Auckland, continues to give increasing justification for its establishment. Every testimony,