E.—l

Full-time Classified Teachers in Manual-training Classes, December, 1925.

The table shows a total of 138 teachers, as compared with 136 for the previous year, the increase being due to increase of special classes at manual-training centres. Judging by the continued and importunate demand for manual training, especially in centres where there is a district high school, it is evident that parents and pupils appreciate instruction in practical subjects. Four new manual-training centres were opened during the year 1925, and in most districts a majority of the pupils in Standards V and VI, including practically all in the schools above Grade 111, obtain some training at manual-training centres. Science and nature-study in district high schools and primary schools have been supervised as in previous years by itinerant agricultural instructors, who have also continued to give valuable service in advising teachers and School Committees in regard to the laying-out of school grounds and gardens, besides instructing the children in actual gardening operations and plot experiments, and in some districts helping with agricultural-club work. In one or two cases the agricultural instructors have devoted special efforts to encouraging the children to study the native trees and native birds, and to grow specimens of the former in the schoolgarden. This work deserves every possible assistance and encouragement, if only because it will tend to counteract the effect on the minds of the children of the ruthless destruction of the native bush and its inhabitants which has accompanied the settlement and development of the country for sheep and cattle raising. As in former years, the work done at the special manual-training centres has consisted mainly of woodwork, including instrumental drawing, and in some cases elementary metal-work for the boys, and cookery, with elementary home science, laundry-work, &c., for the girls. Needlework, so far as primary schools are concerned, is done mainly in the primary schools by women teachers on the general staff of the school, or, in cases where there is no woman on the staff, by part-time teachers secured locally. Dressmaking and needlework are taught at the manual-training centres only to secondary classes from the district high schools or other post-primary schools. In some cases the supervision of the manual-training work is done by the Principal of the technical school, and the teachers are employed by the Technical School Board. Such an arrangement permits closer articulation between the general elementary work of the primary classes and the more specialized courses of the technical school or technical high school. There are considerable advantages in such an arrangement, and the new regulations brought into force on the Ist February, 1926, were drafted with a view to making such an arrangement the general rule throughout the Dominion. The Education Boards, however, could not agree to accept the principle compulsorily, and the regulations were made permissive, so that an Education Board could, if it so desired, call upon the technical school to do the work. In most centres the Education Boards continue to supervise the work, but in few instances is the supervision done by educationists expert in handwork methods.

2--E. 1.

9

Division I. ( Division II. Class. j r j Totals. Men. Women, j Men. j Women. I I I VII VI .. .. .. 1 .. 5 4 10 V .. .. .. 5 .. 15 10 30 IV .. .. .. 8 1 15 4 28 III .. .. .. .. 2 14 10 26 II .. .. .. 4 8 4 4 20 I .. .. 1 8 10 5 24 Totals, 1925 .. 19 19 63 37 138 38 100 Note. —Five teachers on staffs of junior high schools included.