New Plymouth, December 9, 1867.

SIR,—In accordance with the instructions conveyed to me in your Honor’s letter of the 2nd October, I beg to forward herewith my half-yearly Report of the condition of the Schools in this Province receiving Government aid, together with certain recommendations for their better organisation, which I hope will receive your Honor’s most earnest consideration.

I cannot lay too much stress on the great necessity which exists for a revision of the regulations at present in force as to the distribution of the Government aid, for a more efficient system of supervision and control, and generally for the adoption of any measures whereby the indifference of parents to the education of their children may be diminished, and the numbers attending the various Schools, in the town as well as the country, increased.

I have the honor to be, Sir,

Your most obedient servant,

ROBERT H. EYTON,

Inspector of Schools.

His Honor the Superintendent,

Taranaki.

REPORT AS TO THE CONDITION OF THE SCHOOLS IN THE PROVINCE OF TARANAKI, RECEIVING GOVERNMENT AID.

During the past two months, I have visited the various schools in this Province receiving aid from the Government, with the exception of the Patea and Manutahi schools, and have examined the children attending, in reading, writing, and arithmetic. I much regret that the result of these examinations should have been so unsatisfactory as I have to report. I found that the large majority of children had no real knowledge of which they were supposed to have learned, and that they were unable to answer questions unless put in precisely the same form and order as that to which they had been accustomed.

For instance, some of the children considered most advanced by their teachers, were quite unable to repeat the multiplication table except just as it is printed, and in several cases after hearing a reading lesson, I found the pupils could not tell many thing of what they had been reading. In the same way in spelling, the lesson for the day was usually well learned and repeated, but as I went back through the lessons of one, two, or three days before, I found the answers become less and less accurate, until at last they were the merest guess work; the children had no idea of the sound of the letters, and could spell no words, as a general rule, which they had not learned.

This state of things must in the main be attributed to the perfunctory manner in which the teacher explains the tasks to the children, and which is owing to the want of training, rather than the want of will. My Conclusion is, that generally speaking the education which is being given at the Government Schools is not such as to develop successfully the intelligence of the scholars, or give any grounds for the expectation that they will ever feel an interest in and of their own accord endeavour to prosecute, their studies after they have acquired a sort of knowledge of reading, writing, and ciphering; on the contrary, I think it is far more probable that three-fourths of the children will in a very short time forget the little they had learned. I should mention that these faults are not nearly so apparent in the schools which are regularly and frequently visited by persons interested in their well-being: such are the Roman Catholic and Infant Schools, the former of which I consider on the whole to be in a better condition than any of the others. While the instruction given in the most elementary branches is so exceedingly unsatisfactory, as I have said, it is of course out of the question to expect that the children should be acquainted with anything beyond.

I believe the state of things above described, is the almost necessary consequence of the very irregular manner in which the children attend school. It is scarcely fair to judge solely by the past quarter, as the prevalence of measles in the town and its vicinity has no doubt kept away many who would otherwise have come; but from what I gather from the teachers, I am led to infer that there is very great irregularity at all times, more especially in the country districts. In some cases this quite prevents the division of the school into classes, and in all it is a very great abstraction. The teacher has in consequence to hear each child separately, and has therefore no time to see that the pupil thoroughly understands the lesson, or to explain it as fully as it should be explained.

The number of children receiving Government aid is as follows:

A considerable number of these do not attend often enough to derive any practical benefit, and in some instances where there were two or more children in one family I found that they attended alternately, and that while the parents only paid the fee for one child, the Government was paying for all. The teachers state that they are unable to insist on the attendance being more regular, as the result of remonstrance is frequently to cause the parents to remove the children altogether.

There are also a great many children who do not go to school at all, but I am not able even to form a conjecture as to their number, and only know that such is the case from the statement of the different teachers. When the census returns are published, it will be possible to ascertain the number of these children pretty accurately.

It is not easy under such unfavourable circumstances to form a judgment as to the competence of the teachers in the different schools, but it would be highly surprising to anyone to find really good teachers in schools where so little encouragement is offered, and where the whole income of the master is scarcely as much as he would be able to earn if he were a labouring man. The Messrs. Earl alone have had any previous experience in teaching. In all the schools I believe the teachers are diligent and painstaking, but that from want of training they absolutely do not know how to convey their instructions so as to awaken the intelligence and interest of the children. As long as this is the case, it is impossible that rapid progress should be made, and although the want of good teachers arises in the first instance from the bad attendance, and small inducement offered, it undoubtedly reacts on the attendance, and parents seeing how very slowly the children advance, come to think it is scarcely worth while to send them at all. That this is really the case, is evident from the fact that the best attended and most successful school in town is one which is receiving no Government aid. I do not think that the ill-success of the Government Schools arises from an absolute want of knowledge on the part of the masters, and mistresses, so much as from an incapability of putting what they know in a form comprehensible