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It only remains that I should add that the order and discipline of the school appear to me to be very good , and I had good opportunities of judging, as I spent six hours in various rooms at viva vooa work. 1 am, &c, The Chairman, Board of Governors. C. H. H. Cook.

7 Eefokt of J H. Pope, Esq., Government Inspector. Sm,— Education Department, Wellington, 8th December, 1883. I have the honour to report that, in accordance with your instructions, I visited and inspected the Christchurch Boys' High School on the 1st December The school Was in full operation at the time of my visit, and every opportunity was afforded mo of gaining information as to the management and working of the school. The staff consists of Mr T Miller, M.A., Headmaster, Mr. G. Hogben, M.A., and five other masters. Besides these, there are visiting masters, who teach singing, drill, swimming, &c. The organization of the school is based upon the principle of distinct classification for each subject. A boy may bo in the highest form in mathematics, in a middle form for English, and in the lowest form for Latin. It is found necessary to adopt this plan because so many of the boys that come up from district and other schools are found to bo well advanced in one or two subjects and very backward in others. A similar principle is acted upon in the case of the masters. Every teacher is, of course, stronger in some subjects than in others matters are so arranged, therefore, that the higher classes in each subject are given to the masters that are strongest in that subject. There are now 132 boys attending the school; those are arranged in classes as follows Lower I., 27, Upper I., 23, II., 28, III., 27, IV., 15, V., 9. These are the numbers in each class where Latin is taken as the basis of classification. The following statement will show what subjects are taught, and how much time is devoted to each subject • Latin, 6f hours, mathematics, *5-| or 6 hours, English, |-4i-hours; French, 2J hours, history, hours , geography, 1-J- hours, science, 5 hours. All boys, except in one or two special cases, are taught the subjects mentioned. A good deal of science work has been done the subjects were chemistry, physiology, and botany. Greek is an extra and optional subject the few boys that take it are well advanced; they are reading Thucydides and Euripides. Drawing is done at the Art School. Singing and. drill receive due attention. Tho discipline is on the whole good, but in one room, in which two classes assemble, there is much disorder • this is to some extent caused by the room being large and resonant. When the building was being designed perhaps there was a little too much anxiety to produce an elegant building, and too little care taken to make it thoroughly suitable for school purposes. Anyway, it is very desirable that the difficulty referred to should be got over immediately Perhaps a substantial partition is the only remedy that would be effectual. The " school tone " of the boys taught by tho Headmaster and the second master is good, these boys work with a will, and show satisfactory interest in all the school business. I saw the second master give lessons in geometry, Latin, and French the teaching seemed to me to be clear, vigorous, and well fitted to arouse and sustain the boys' attention. Perhaps, however, it would be an improvement if the boys were made to use their tongues a little more and their pens a little less frequently than they actually do. A lesson in Latin composition was given to the senior boys by the Headmaster The work was made a sort of joint-stock affair, the Headmaster became for the time as one of the boys. He asked for and received such assistance as they were able to give, led them, skilfully, to find out when and how tho advice given by them was unsound, told them nothing until every means of eliciting what they knew had been tried, and generally made the work interesting, instructive, and highly educational. It is a general opinion that the strength of secondary-school teachers does not, as a rule, lie in what is technically called " method." Perhaps this opinion is correct to a certain extent, but it would not hold good with regard to the upper part of this school. Tho form of the lessons given would satisfy the most exacting primary-school inspector of course it is unnecessary for me to say anything about the matter of lessons given by a distinguished scholar. In a French lesson given in a lower part of the school, I noticed that a passage in a French book was read over and over again by individual pupils, tho other members of the class being virtually idle while one boy was reading. If the master had read the lesson to the scholars clause by clause, then sentence by sentence, and finally paragraph by paragraph, making all the class follow him simultaneously, very much time would have been saved, all the boys would have been profitably employed, and each one would have had three times as much practice in reading French as he actually did have. It would have been easy to test tho work afterwards by making two or three of the boys read alone. The handwriting of the boys is, on the whole, poor The subject is not taught by a skilled master I think this is a weak point in the school, every boy who enters, say, Form IV should already have a well-formed hand. I gather from what I saw that a good deal of attention is paid to English composition, and that it is well taught. I am inclined to think, however, that the subjects chosen for essays, &c, are generally of a too purely literary character I was glad to see, however, that a prize is offered for the best essay on a scientific subject. The masters in the lower part of the school are changed very frequently, no one seems to remain in the school more than a few months. The reason is, I suppose, that these masters, being necessarily men of good attainments, find it easy to better their positions and secure much higher

* The upper classes devote rather less time (half an hour a week) to arithmetic, t The junior classes liavo one hour extra in which they do dictation, spelling, &c.