13

E.—l

Manual training continues to be exceedingly popular with**both parents and pupils, the latter at all times displaying the greatest eagerness in attacking the problems presented in connection witli this branch of their education. With the growth in the school population there comes a demand for increased facilities in the shape of additional manual-training centres and equipment, but it lias not been possible to comply with all the requests made. At the beginning of the year a new centre for woodwork and cookery was opened at Coutts Street, Wellington, to meet the requirements of the rapidly growing suburbs in the south: and east. Education Boards have not to any great extent availed themselves of the regulations brought into force at the beginning of the year under review whereby they may hand over to Principals of technical schools the supervision of manual-training centres in their school districts. Some two or three Education Boards employ qualified supervisors who deal with this side of the work, but in other cases the supervision is entrusted to members of the office staff, or to a senior teacher whose ordinary duties claim almost the whole of his time and attention, and it is to be hoped that eventually the advantages to be derived from placing the immediate control of all practical work such as woodwork, metalwork, cookery, and so forth in the hands of those who are directly concerned with the more specialized courses of the same kind in the technical schools and technical high schools will be realized. A noteworthy feature is the increased demand for facilities for manual training in connection with secondary-school classes. In all junior high schools this branch of education occupies a prominent place, the specialist teachers being included in the general staff of the schools. So far as primary schools are concerned, instruction in needlework is taken by women teachers on the staff of the school, or, in cases where there is no woman on the staff, by part-time teachers secured locally. In the manual-training centres instruction in dressmaking and needlework is restricted to classes from post-primary schools or from the secondary department of district high schools. The plan of placing the organizing of the teaching of needlework in the primary schools of Christchurch and the neighbouring towns in the hands of a supervising instructor proved to be eminently successful in practice. Eor the supervision of instruction in science and nature-study in district high schools and primary schools each Education Board employs one or more itinerant agricultural instructors. These specialists, numbering twenty-five in all, are giving exceedingly valuable service to the country. Their principal duty is to advise teachers on the matter to be dealt with and the methods to be followed in handling these important branches of education, both indoors and in connection with the experimental plots ; but they also devote attention, mainly in their own time, to boys' and girls' agricultural-club work, calf-rearing experiments, and so forth, besides giving expert advice to teachers and School Committees on the laying-out and beautifying of the school grounds. Year by year they are called upon to an increasing extent by former pupils now engaged in farm-work for advice regarding problems confronting them in their life work, and this in itself is a striking testimony to the esteem in which they are held by that section of the community engaged in the greatest of our primary industries. Hand-and-eye training, apart from that in the hands of specialist instructors at the manual centres, continues to receive a good measure of attention in the primary schools. The material for the work is supplied by the Department, and the economy effected by this system is such as to permit of a more satisfactory allocation as far as quantity is concerned, and there is an additional advantage in that the quality of the material is maintained, at a uniformly high standard. Special material of various kinds is also supplied to teachers of infants' classes in order as far as possible to meet the requirements of modern methods of teaching where the very young are concerned. The principle followed is in accordance with that observed both at Home and in America, but we have not yet been able to carry it into practice to the same extent as is done in those countries. For salaries, materials, and incidentals in connection with manual instruction and hand-and-eye training the Department's payments for the financial year 1926-27 amounted to £77,6.15, of which £46,247 was for salaries (including salaries