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their services would be in very little request in school during the harvest quarter. They might derive benefit from residence at a Normal School during this season.

VI.—PAYMENT.

Payment by results appears to involve disputes between the Committees and the Inspector; appeals to the Board; and temptations to make false entries and returns. It depends also upon the suitableness of the programmes and the standards required.

VII.—PROGRAMMES.

One programme is prescribed for all the schools in Victoria. It presupposes schools all of similar organisation, largely consisting of town schools, and each one divisible into six classes. The scheme, if capable of being effected, will secure great uniformity in the course of instruction.

The organisation and dimensions of the Victorian system and schools are more assimilated to those of the mother country under a settled form of government, the circumstances are most dissimilar from those of a small settlement emerging from its abnormal condition. The programmes supposed to be applicable to the many large schools, in the densely populated districts of a great Colony, have no relation to the sparse and thinly-attended ones of a small Province, in which, according to the returns of 1869, the average of attendance, in four-fifths of the schools, ranged from eight or ten to fifty, only twelve schools having exceeded that average.

VIII.—REGISTERS AND RETURNS.

The mode of registration in use throughout Great Britain, under the regulations of the Committee of Privy Council on Education, is practised in the schools of this Province (Canterbury). The registers approved there are imported and used here. Comparing the Victorian registers with the English, the latter are, to my judgment, preferable here, if not better adapted to the Victorian system than those in use in that Colony.

Returns.—Monthly returns appear to me unnecessary except with a view to the monthly payment of teachers.

“Statutory Declaration.”—The returns in Victoria are accompanied with a “statutory declaration” as to their authenticity; and, untruthfulness in this “statutory declaration” is, by an “Act of the Parliament of Victoria,” rendered equivalent to “perjury.”

So far as I am competent to express an opinion upon this regulation, it appears, from what experience I have had, that negligence will occasionally occur in spite of all human enactments; and, that the negligent person will have to choose the alternative of either, by his own admission, incurring the consequences of irregular registration, or, of committing “perjury.” There must be a continual temptation habituating persons of weak principle to the practice of deceit “equivalent to crime,” and inuring their consciences to a sense of guilt.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Agreements with Teachers.

Notice of Dismissal.

The Board supplies forms of agreement, and requires a duplicate of every agreement between any Local Committee and teacher to be deposited at least one month before the first payment of grant becomes due.

Local Committees notify simultaneously to the Board and the teacher their intention of dismissal.

In conclusion, I would respectfully submit to the Board, that before the Victorian Regulations could be initiated, it became necessary to place all the schools on a similar