NELSON GOVERNMENT GAZETTE. 91

Prizes and Class Registers.—I took occasion in my last year's report, to impress upon teachers the necessity of keeping a daily record of the standing of each scholar, in the upper classes at least, as the only means of ensuring a just distribution of the prizes so liberally awarded in our schools. I also complained of the needless prodigality with which prizes were showered upon the scholars. It is disheartening, I need hardly report that the lapse of another year has brought but little improvement in either respect. Not more than three or four additional schools keep anything in the shape of a class register, while I have myself, in more than one instance, reluctantly and under protest, given several prizes to each of three scholars in a class of half-a-dozen. For these, and for several other reasons, I have come to the conclusion that examinations for prizes by an Inspector are absolutely mischievous, and ought to be discontinued. In the first place, they form no part of an Inspector's duties, which consist, as it appears to me, rather in forming an estimate of the relative proficiency of one school as compared with another (allowing for difference of age, irregularity of attendance, and the fifty other causes that may affect the comparison), than in testing the comparative merits of the scholars in each class. So wide is the diversity between the two kinds of examination required, and so distinct are the objects aimed at, that I find it almost impossible, in practice, to combine them in a single examination.

To the objection that in some of the border districts men who are both willing and able to act as examiners are scarce, it may be replied that where a class register is kept, or where a system of giving marks is adopted, very little is left for the examiners to do, always assuming that the records are fairly kept, and to suppose the contrary would, I am persuaded, be a gross injustice to our teachers as a side. I see no good reason why the time of an Inspector, whose duties must increase with the extension of our system, should be wasted in laboriously ascertaining the comparative merits of a class of children who are stumbling over words of one syllable, merely to save a teacher the trouble of carrying out a simple and effectual plan by which the same object might be far more surely attained, but which he is too indolent or too conceited to put into practice. Nor can a Local Committee which declines to provide, as it has an undoubted right to do, that a proper record of the progress of each pupil shall be kept in the school, decline also the task of providing suitable examiners to award the prizes.

School Hours and Holidays.—Different regulations prevail in almost every education district as to school hours and holidays, and I was at one time disposed to recommend the adoption of an uniform rule in these respects, for the whole of the Province. I have since been led to believe, however, that local convenience has been studied when the various times for opening and closing school were fixed, and that it would be injurious to the true interests of our schools to attempt to enforce anything like general uniformity. In the country districts, for instance, the hay and corn harvest, and potato digging, seriously interfere with the attendance of the children, and it has been found convenient that the holidays should be so arranged as to fall within those periods. Again, where the children have several miles to walk to reach school, as not unfrequently happens, it would be found practically impossible to enforce their attendance at such hours as seem most convenient in ordinary cases, say, from nine to twelve in the morning, and from one to three in the afternoon. But though it is not necessary that the times at which holidays are taken should be the same throughout the Province, I see no reason why some nearer approach to uniformity should not be made in the duration of holidays. In some districts mid-winter holidays were allowed, while the mid-summer

holidays vary in length from a week to a month in schools within close proximity to one another. Immemorial usage has sanctioned the division of the school year into two periods, distinctly marked by holidays of greater or less duration; and the unmistakable signs of flagging energies on the part of both teachers and scholars towards the close of each half year, show the expediency of such a break to the monotony of school work. It is difficult to lay down any rule on this subject that shall be universally applicable, but I think that the interval allowed should in no case be less than a fortnight in winter, and three weeks in summer. In large schools these periods might well be extended, not only without injury, but with absolute advantage to the scholars.

Assisted Schools.—An interesting experiment is now being carried on at the West Coast. It was felt that the attempt to proclaim education districts and to impose rates in places like Charleston, for instance, where gold-mining is actually going on in the heart of the township, and where a large proportion of the population is dwelling in tents, would be found to be beset with all sorts of difficulties in practice. It has been resolved, therefore, to grant a small subsidy to each of the two schools already established in Charleston, and to provide books and maps at the outset; the teacher's salary being supplemented by school fees, not to exceed a scale fixed by the Board. An offer of similar assistance has also been made to a school to be established at Brighton. Such schools are of course open to inspection, and it is distinctly understood that the grant will be continued only so long as the schools are efficiently conducted. What renders the success or failure of this experiment a matter of so much importance to the community is the certainty that any considerable diminution of the annual Provincial grant would be attended with one of three results—either a large proportion of the smaller schools must be closed, or it would become necessary to impose a higher education rate, or some modification of the plan above described, must be adopted generally.

Numbers and Daily Attendance.—Four hundred additional names have been added to our rolls for the past year, the total number of children who attended schools at any time during 1867-8, being 2678 as compared with 3078 in 1868-9. 2330 children attended school during the last quarter. The average daily attendance for the past year amounted to sixty-seven and a-half per cent. of the whole number on the rolls during each quarter, and is not only higher than the average attained in any previous year, but contrasts very favorably with the attendance in other Provinces and Colonies. For instance, in 1868 the returns for the Province of Canterbury showed that 4178 children were on the rolls, the daily attendance being 1845, or only forty-four per cent.; while in Victoria, the average for 1867-8 was fifty-seven per cent.—that is to say, thirteen and a-half, and ten per cent. respectively, lower than in Nelson. In the case of England, the data are somewhat imperfect and very confusing, but I see that according to statistics furnished by the Commissioners in 1861, taken from five pairs of specimen districts, the daily average attendance at that time did not exceed fifty-six. These figures will serve to show how far the complaints made, not only by opponents of our system, but occasionally by the teachers themselves, that the children attend school with extreme irregularity, are well founded.

I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
W. C. HODGSON.
Inspector of Schools.