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the advantages of our Provincial system of education,
until the population approached in density that of
the more settled and older neighborhoods; while, on
the other hand, far ampler funds were at the
disposal of the Board would be required to meet the
cost of building schools and maintaining teachers
wherever fifteen or twenty children of school age
could be collected within an area of three or four
square miles. A middle course was decided upon.
Applicants, in such cases as I have referred to, were
required to provide a suitable site, and to erect a
school at their own cost, the Board finding books and
school furniture, besides paying the salary of the
teacher. This has been done at Ngatimoti and at
Motupiko, and seems, on the whole, preferable to the
alternative of falling back on Clause 34 of the
Education Act, which gives two-thirds of the house-
holders of any Education district the power of levy-
ing special rates.

The number of children on the rolls for 1867-8 is
2678, being more by 432 than attended during the
previous year. The number of readers recorded as
"good" is 622, as against 559, an increase, however,
not more than proportionate to the increased number
of scholars. In penmanship steady progress has been
made, this year's returns showing 350 good writers,
compared with 298 last year. But by far the great-
est improvement has been made in arithmetic, the
number of scholars possessing some knowledge of
fractions, decimals, &c. (237), having increased by
fully one-third, while an equally striking advance
has been made by the junior classes. I have reason to
be satisfied with the progress of my
practice to lay before the Board every second year, I
will briefly touch upon several minor matters in
which it seems to me that our schools, as a whole, are
capable of some improvement. I have been in the
habit of examining a large proportion of our schools
annually, at the request of the Local Committees,
with a view to the distribution of prizes, though,
strictly speaking, this scarcely falls within the sphere
of my duties as Inspector. At these examinations
the general practice struck me as being faulty in
several respects. 1st. In the majority of our schools
far too many prizes are usually offered—three or four
prizes being often awarded to a class of six or eight
scholars. To scatter prizes broadcast in this fashion
must tend to weaken that spirit of emulation which
it is the chief object of competitive examinations to
excite and sustain. In the town schools, where not
more than two prizes are offered to a class of twenty
or five-and-twenty, a keen spirit of emulation has
never been wanting—to obtain a prize under such
conditions being justly regarded as an honorable dis-
tinction, and one not to be won without considerable
effort. 2nd. In very few schools is a class register
kept, showing the daily order of merit of each scholar,
an examiner being expected to decide as to the com-
parative merits of perhaps sixty children, after a
necessarily hasty and superficial examination, in the
most, four or five hours duration. Under such cir-
cumstances the most impartial and practised examiner
must frequently decide amiss. Seeing how much
less liable to mislead a record taken perhaps rather
daily, and extending over a considerable period,
would be, than the notes taken hurriedly by an
examiner on a single occasion, and how powerful an
incentive to continuous exertion would be given by
such a record, I do not think that the plea of want
of time should be held sufficient to justify any teacher
in neglecting to keep a class register. The plan has
been adopted in several schools at my suggestion,
and I trust to see it ere long in universal use. 3rd.
The cultivation of the memory appears to have been
very generally neglected. This is no doubt mainly
due to a natural reaction against the old-fashioned
system of teaching, according to which almost exclu-
sive attention was paid to the strengthening of the
faculty of memory. But I hold that it is still an
open question (whatever may be urged by the more
modern school of teaching), whether spelling can be
so successfully taught by dictation alone, as it can
with the assistance of the spelling-book. And the
practice of learning poetry by heart is so uncom-
mon, in addition to its beneficial effect on the
memory, has the great advantage of storing the mind
at a period when it is most impressionable, with
many of the masterpieces of our language, insomuch
that the stock of noble thoughts thus acquired, how-
ever dimly their full meaning may be apprehended
at the time, may be reckoned among the most lasting
and the most valuable possessions that a child carries
away from school.

First Division Town Boys, Bridge-street—Mr.
Smith.—The establishment of the two large schools
in Hampden-street and on the Haven road as inde-
pendent schools (that on the Haven road having been
formerly merely auxiliary to the Bridge-street school)
must have affected the position of the latter, as a
leading school, to a certain extent. It continues,
notwithstanding, to hold a very respectable rank
among our schools, a manifest improvement having
taken place both in reading and writing, the latter of
which especially was below the average last year.
The arithmetic continues as heretofore, remarkably
good, while the upper classes show a fair acquaint-
ance with geography, grammar, and the outlines of
English history. The discipline is also excellent.

Second Division Town Boys—Mr. Sadd, assisted
by Mr. Simmonds.—Drafts of carefully prepared
scholars are promoted periodically to the first class
in this division to the Upper school. Little more
can be said of this school than that it fulfils in every
respect the purpose for which it was originally insti-
tuted, that of giving a sound preparatory training to
a large number of boys, the bulk of whom are under
10 years of age.

First Division Town Girls—Mrs. Sait.—With the
assistance of a pupil teacher, the mistress of this
division gives an excellent education to about 60
girls. The reading and writing are almost uniformly
very good, while arithmetic, in which the girls failed
palpably at the last yearly examination, has been so
carefully attended to since, that this school now ranks
only second to the boys' school, Bridge-street, in that
respect. The knowledge of geography, grammar,
and history is quite equal to what may fairly be
expected. I have remarked, however, that this
school, as is usually the case where a very energetic
system of teaching prevails, is rather noisy, though
hardly so much so as to interrupt the class work.

Second Division, Town Girls—Miss Galland.—I
have every reason to be satisfied with the orderly and
efficient way in which the children who attend this
school, the larger proportion of whom are under nine
years of age, are being prepared for the Upper Girls'
school. No attempt is made to impart anything but
the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic,
but in that order as befits a school of a preparatory
school, where large numbers of very young children
are under the care of a single teacher.

Town Preparatory—Mrs. Cook, assisted by
Miss Cother.—This school is well-conducted, and
numerously attended, and continues to furnish half-
yearly drafts to the Second Division of the Town
Girls and Boys Schools. Some months ago, when
the pressure of numbers threatened to injure the