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the Government approved, as from the beginning of 1940, of payment of conveyance allowance for pupils of private schools, both primary and post-primary, on the same conditions as apply to children of State schools. It is estimated that this will result in an additional cost of some £21,500 annually. Approval was also given for the payment of allowances to children who ride horses to school. During 1939 the consolidation of thirty-three small schools on twenty-four centres was approved, but the outbreak of war and the consequent necessity to conserve petrol supplies have made it necessary to scrutinize very carefully all new proposals for the consolidation of schools. The Correspondence School has continued to cater very satisfactorily for the needs of those children who cannot take advantage of conveyance services or boarding-allowances. It broke new ground by holding in May a vacation school for pupils from all over New Zealand, and during the year the Department added three new permanent teachers to the staff so that the system of visiting teachers, begun in 1939, could be made a permanent part of the School's work. It is hoped in these ways to strengthen that corporate school spirit which it is so difficult to generate through the written word alone. Difficult and expensive though they be, building and conveyance policies are easy to put into operation compared with the task of bringing about real changes in the spirit of the class-room, and ultimately the success of all the Government's educational policies must be measured in terms of the use that teachers make of the freedom that has been offered them, for finance, buildings, and equipment have value only in so far as they make more effective the work of teaching and of learning. There is every reason to believe that the results achieved in the class-room have been no less striking than those achieved in the provision of material equipment and facilities ; but this is a sphere in which one can never be satisfied, and it may well be that the Department, without slackening its programme on the mere material side, can devote an increasing amount of effort to the task of professional leadership in the class-room. This is a function which it was never originally intended that the Department should exercise. Sir Charles Bowen, in introducing the Act of 1877, said : "A Secretary and a Clerk will probably do all the work of the Central Department for some time to come," the work being conceived as purely administrative. When it was given control of the primary-school inspectorate in 1914 the Department developed new potentialities on the professional side, and since that time it has exercised a growing influence on class-room practice. The introduction into the primary schools of what has come to be known as the " new freedom" makes it more than ever desirable that the Department, through its Inspectors, should develop to the utmost its function of professional leadership. From time to time in the past two years fears have been expressed in the public press and elsewhere that the abolition of the Proficiency Examination and the introduction of the "new freedom" might lead to a serious drop in the standards of work. lam pleased to be able to state that there is every indication from the reports of Inspectors of Schools and from other evidence not only that the standard of work in the formal subjects has been adequately maintained, but also that significant new developments are taking place in other fields no less a part of true education than the three R's. Music, drama, and the arts generally, are receiving more attention than they did ; physical skills of all kinds are reaching a new level; children are reading more widely and more independently ; they are more selfreliant and more friendly towards adults ; and they are, I believe, leaving the schools a little readier than ever before to take their places in the world. The Education Department is well aware of the special problems arising from the new attitude towards education. It is conceivable that, without proper controls, the pendulum might eventually swing too far from formalism towards mere formlessness. If there should ever be any sign of this it might be necessary to lay down certain minimum requirements in the fundamental " tool" subjects of the curriculum. That time has not yet come, and, indeed, may never come. Certainly at the present stage the best control lies not so much in restrictions as in positive professional leadership. Ever since the present policy was introduced

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