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With the exception of the Pigeon Bay School, in which the numbers are comparatively small, and a higher course of instruction is given to the pupils, these schools are more remarkable for the number of well-taught children than for their high attainments.

Other schools deserving of commendatory notice for their improvement during the year are the—

Woodend School.
Governor Bay School.
Lincoln School.
Leithfield School.
Saltwater Creek School.
Lower Heathcote School.
Harewood Road School.
Upper Heathcote School.
Rangiora Girls’ School.

Among the newer schools, those at Fernside and Eyreton deserve highly commendatory notice, both for the steadfast earnestness of their respective teachers, and for their judicious perseverance in securing that the children shall be well grounded in an elementary course before attempting higher subjects.

The following children are specially commended for good conduct and diligence during the year:—

From the Pigeon Bay Academy—William Hall, aged 9; Robert Hay, Thomas Turnbull.

From the Christchurch Wesleyan School—Phoebe Taylor, Thomas Walker, George Griffin.

From the Okain Bay School—William Moore, W. J. Prosser.

From the St. Paul’s School, Papanui—Maria Derrett, Charles Jennings, Ursula Jackson.

From the Kaiapoi Church School—Charles Bean, Mary Ann Alexander, Edward Harrison Davis.

From the Rangiora Boys’ School—Alfred Merton, Westby Percival, Wm. Foster.

From the St. Luke’s School—William Haggett, George Gordon.

From the St. Andrew’s School—Elizabeth Allen, Agnes Crosbie.

From the Timaru School—Valentine Wilson, Mary Jaggar, William Scarfe.

From the Akaroa School—Charles Watkins.

From the Woodend School—Elizabeth Wooding, Charles Norton.

From the Saltwater Creek School—Wm. Rae Scott.

From the Governor Bay School—Hugh Manson.

From the Lincoln School—William Pannett, Annie Louisa Wright.

From the Leithfield School—Eliza Moore, John William Leith.

From the Upper Heathcote School—Julia Seager.

From the Christchurch St. Michael’s School—Charles Purdie, Henry Green, Phoebe Goodger.

From the Christchurch Roman Catholic School—Robert F. Houlihan, Edward Sharp, John Mulloy.

From the Lyttelton Wesleyan School—Tom Benetto, Thomas Wishart, Arthur Davidson.

From the Lyttelton Church of England School—Garnet Jenkins.

From the Kaiapoi Wesleyan School—Jesse Hall.

From the Little Akaloa School—Margaret Cook.

The names of the several children who obtained prizes last year have been omitted from the present list, for different reasons, some because their frequent employment as monitors has prevented them from making progress at the same rate as they formerly did; in other instances, because being already at the head of the school, the pupils have lost both the stimulus of constant competition and the brightening effect of it.

There is also in most schools, for the instruction of large numbers in elementary knowledge, a limit beyond which children do not make any apparent progress. This mostly results from the inability of teachers, with a large school and inadequate assistance, to teach beyond a certain course; children are promoted continually from the lower classes, and the same routine has to be gone over with them as with their predecessors.

Where the course is thus limited the school mostly proves to be better taught throughout than where the zeal or ambition of a teacher urges him to teach higher subjects to a handful of elder pupils, thus absorbing the energies of his mind in a task more pleasant than the drudgery of school work.