✨ Educational Inspector's Report
18 TARANAKI GOVERNMENT GAZETTE.
Several of the school-houses would be rendered more cleanly, healthy, and pleasant, by a coat or two of bright wash on their internal walls and roofs.
The West Town School-house would be much improved by the addition of windows on the east side. At present it has windows only on the west side, and has consequently within a gloomy appearance, even in the summer time during the early part of the day.
Each school should be furnished as soon as possible with a black-board. By it the teacher will be enabled to obtain a double entrance to the minds of the children—by the eye as well as the ear. Each school also requires maps of the world and of New Zealand.
The schools generally possess but a small and heterogeneous assortment of books; I would therefore advise that all the schools be furnished with sets of the books adopted by the Board as early as possible.
Complaints are made that the system of giving the children lessons to learn at home is generally a failure. Most country children have home duties to perform, both before and after school hours: the girls have the little children to tend, and the boys have to drive the cows to and from the pastures, so that they have not much time to bestow upon such lessons. The books also are frequently lost or mislaid at home. I think it would be best for the teachers to endeavor to dispense with these lessons. Frequent exercises in dictation would be found an excellent substitute for home-learned spelling lessons.
To render the schools more efficient, and also to ensure uniformity, I would recommend the Board to adopt a syllabus of lessons, to be given in every school at certain hours. I would also recommend that in consideration of the increased salary already given to the teachers, and the prospect of a still further increase, that the school hours for each school should be uniformly five hours per day for five days in the week, and that upon no consideration the hours on Friday be allowed to be curtailed.
In some schools I have noticed a want of order, arising from the presence of troublesome infants. I would therefore advise that no children under five years of age be admitted to the ordinary schools of the Board.
A large case, with lock, is needed in most of the schools for the safe keeping of books and other school property.
Lastly, I would advise that the schools be efficiently and continuously inspected. This, I am persuaded, is absolutely necessary to ensure diligence on the part of the teachers; it is not in ordinary human nature to faithfully discharge duty without supervision. Moreover, the visits of an inspector would act as a stimulus to the children, and his suggestions to the teachers, and his reports to the Board would necessarily be productive of good results.
BENJAMIN WELLS,
Honorary Inspector of Schools,
pro. tem.
Printed under the authority of the Government of the Province of Taranaki, by W. H. J. Seffern, of Devon-street, New Plymouth, Printer to the Provincial Government for the time being.
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Taranaki Provincial Gazette 1875, No 4
✨ LLM interpretation of page content
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Educational Status and Recommendations for Taranaki Schools
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🎓 Education, Culture & ScienceEducation, Schools, Curriculum, Geography, Arithmetic, History, Political Economy, Poetry, Natural History, Moral Purity, Physical Purity
- BENJAMIN WELLS, Honorary Inspector of Schools, pro. tem.