E.—2.

be secured if the school is to hold up its head in sports and games. Not only playing-fields but gardens and ornamental grounds are a necessary part of the school environment. The school can therefore rarely be placed in the most convenient position for ready access from the business centre of the town. In the third place, the organization of the school requires that the principal subjects of the professional and general courses shall be in as capable hands as possible. Hence the heads of departments are in charge of general subjects or groups of subjects such as English, mathematics, science, Latin, modern languages, and not of special courses such as commerce, engineering, agriculture, as in the technical high school. Thus the Sixth Form has the advantage of being taught by all the best teachers in the school, each, a specialist in the subject which he teaches. In a technical high school the heads of departments are distributed over the various courses, and only one, or at the most two, comes into direct contact with any particular pupil. The special courses in a technical high school are framed and managed by the heads of the courses who have definite trade or professional training in the occupations for which the courses are a preparation. In the secondary school the professional courses, usually English, Latin, French, mathematics, science, with sufficient history, &c., in the lower forms to satisfy the regulations for free places, is the " type " course, and other courses are derived from it by " dropping " Latin or Latin and French, and substituting " agriculture," or " bookkeeping and shorthand" or other vocational subjects according to the course. Remembering that the status and reputation of a secondary school depend in no small degree on the quality of the work done in the Sixth Form, the reason for the organization of its heads of departments as a team of specialist teachers in the main subjects of the professional course is obvious. In the three cases of amalgamation that have taken place recently it is impossible to say, as yet, whether the inherent difficulties of the problem of the combined school will be reasonably well overcome. It is already evident that the staffing scale of the combined school should be 011 a more liberal basis than that of the technical high school or of the secondary school, and the difficulty of the organization of the departments of the school, whether according to the system of the secondary school or according to that of the technical high school, has not vet been satisfactorily solved. In each of the three cases, also, the combined school is separated into boys' and girls' schools and the evening work has not been, so carefully co-ordinated with the day work as would have been possible under one head in a large co-educational institution. These combined schools are further handicapped from the point of view of their technical courses by the fact that the buildings formerly occupied by the technical high school have not been replaced by suitable accommodation at the schools to which the day pupils have been transferred, and must still be used at considerable inconvenience by pupils taking technical courses. In the case of New Plymouth, where the amalgamation has been virtually complete for some three years, the technical courses, day and evening, are still mainly under the direction of the former Principal of the technical school, whose co-operation with the Principals of the boys' and girls' schools has been sufficiently close to enable the work to be carried out with a fair measure of success, but it cannot be said that we may anticipate even in this case anything like full compliance with the conditions stated above on which the establishment of an efficient and economical system of technical instruction depends. In the other two recent cases of amalgamation the conditions, so far, are not favourable to the vigorous development of combined institutions performing the functions of the technical school as well as those of the secondary school. The Technical High Schools. These schools fall naturally into two main groups, those which are the only post-primary schools in small country centres and which therefore take all courses and those which, situated in. the main centres and cities of the Dominion, devote themselves almost exclusively to pre-vocational and technical training. The schools in the former group, generally of small or medium size, have a difficult task to arrange their time-tables so as to provide for many courses with relatively small staffs. Many compromises are necessary, but it must be acknowledged that, on the whole, the schools solve this problem remarkably well, aided as they are by the elasticity of the regulations, which give a large measure of freedom to the Principal in the arrangement of his courses. The curricula of these schools are naturally biased to some extent by the nature of local industrial conditions, so that when the academic courses desired by many of the pupils have been provided for, pre-vocational courses in agriculture, commerce, engineering, and building trades, and domestic arts are strongly developed. Indeed, in certain schools, as at the Feilding Technical High School, where favourable conditions now exist, the pre-vocational course —in this case the agricultural course —is made the backbone of the curriculum, other courses being regarded as subsidiary ones. The actual teaching in these schools shows steady improvement, as young teachers highly qualified and sensitive to the trend of events, not only in the narrow world of educational theories but in the world of affairs outside, take their places in the schools. General organization for sports and games, for social activities of various kinds, and for various degrees of self-government is observed to be very well done in these schools. In the latter group are included the larger technical high schools in centres where other postprimary schools are to be found. These schools form an essential part of a complete technical school organization comprising both day and evening classes, each of which is complementary to and reinforces the activities of the other. In these largo schools, three at least of which number more than a thousand day pupils, we have examples of organized educational activities which for efficiency, economy, and effectiveness are truly remarkable. Provided with staffs made up on the one side of University graduates, many with honours degrees, and on the other of industrialists, tradesmen, and professional men with sound practical and theoretical knowledge, these schools take as their aim the education of " the whole man." The methods of teaching show versatility and powers of adaptation of material conditions, often not of the best, which are deserving of the greatest praise,

8