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most efficient teaching in Standard VI the level of merit required for the certificate of proficiency cannot be reached if the teacher and the pupil, of Standard VI have, in addition to the work prescribed for them, to do a large proportion of what is prescribed for lower classes ; and this in many cases is what they have to do. In the majority of the larger schools the teaching in Standard VI is undoubtedly efficient, and yet the results of the examinations for the certificate of proficiency seem to point to inefficient teaching there. What they do point to is improper classification by head teachers, many of whom have not yet risen to the level of the responsibilities cast upon them by the change that removed the classification of the schools from Inspectors to head teachers. Of this we have no doubt; for we have examined a large proportion of the papers upon the merits of which the pupils were promoted, have tested the pupils themselves, and, in addition to this testimony, have had frequent complaints from the teachers of Standard VI of the defective attainments of pupils sent to them from Standard V, the teachers of which also complain of the defective attainments of the pupils sent to them from Standard IV. This laxity in classification presses very heavily on the teachers of the higher classes, and makes the work unnecessarily difficult and very disheartening ; it is also highly detrimental to the ultimate interest of the children, who fail to gain from the school course the mental equipment it is designed to give them, an equipment that, even when given in full measure, is all too scanty for efficient citizenship, and that no undue haste in promotion should be allowed to curtail. Grammar and composition, arithmetic and geography, all of great value in civic and economic life, are the subjects in which the attainments of the pupils of the senior classes too generally fall below what, with good classification and the present quality of the instruction, they might easily be made. A second year spent in Standard V would undoubtedly be of great ultimate benefit to many pupils now promoted to Standard VI before they are adequately equipped for it. It has been said that a nation is in the hands of the schoolmaster, a statement that is true only within very narrow limits. For the first six or seven years of his life the child does not come within the reach of the schoolmaster's influence ; for about six-sevenths of his life between the ages of six or seven and thirteen or fourteen he lives in an environment that lies wholly outside it, and from thirteen or fourteen his entire life is. wholly severed from it, and too often subject to influences which render nugatory that of the schoolmaster, a severance that in most English-speaking communities produces big waste of national education. With the best quality of attendance, the school life of most children is only seven or eight times 210 days, a period that is all too brief to enable them to equip themselves with the knowledge and the instruments of knowledge that are essential to every member of a modern democracy; and, unfortunately, much of what they learn during this brief period is afterwards lost from the absence of compulsory attendance at an evening or a continuation school between the ages of fourteen and seventeen or eighteen. What can be done to prevent this waste of national education is the question we must solve before we can say, even with approximate truth, that the nation is in the hands of the schoolmaster. Its solution has been attempted elsewhere, and ought to be attempted here. In his very able report on " Schools and other Educational Institutions in Europe and America," Mr. Hogben, the Inspector-General of Schools, says, — " The extension of school age is one of the lessons we have to learn from Europe: all progressive countries are practically agreed in this —the education of the citizens must not cease at the age of thirteen, or fourteen, or fifteen, when his mind is still unformed, but must be carried on into the years when he is beginning to look at the world with the maturer eyes of manhood, and when his interests are no longer those of the child, but more identical with those of the majority of the earnest workers around him. In fact, we must extend our ' school age ' for all individuals—not merely for the professional students—from fourteen or fifteen to eighteen at least. This does not imply that none are to go to work until that age ; but, even if the necessity of earning a living makes such a course inevitable (as it undoubtedly does in the majority of cases), still, we must so modify our ideas and our practice as to give to the apprentices in the workshops, the junior clerks in our shops and offices, the boys on the farms, and the girls in their homes, that instruction which will make them more efficient in their several callings, give them a wider outlook on the world, and, therefore, make them better citizens. The instruction should go on side by side with their daily work—if possible, in the daytime, when their energies are fresh, but, if not, in the evening. Employers in other parts of the world have found it to their benefit to have their apprentices educated, and have willingly given up six or seven hours a week for this purpose; and the workers' unions in Switzerland, Wurtemberg, and elsewhere have cordially co-operated with the employers in voting in most of the communes for the legal enforcement of such attendance. In any case, whether the instruction is given in the daytime or in the evening, whether attendance is enforced by legal enactment or by mutual agreement, it is absolutely certain that unless we in New Zealand take steps to imitate the example set by older countries, not only shall we fall behind Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the United States, but we shall by no means keep pace with the more advanced communities in England and Scotland, where the principle I am pleading for is beginning to be recognised." It is certain that from lack of that for which Mr. Hogben pleads there is in New Zealand enormous waste of mental and moral power, waste that greatly impairs our social welfare and industrial efficiency. Is it beyond our power to prevent this waste and to provide machinery by means of which we can bringto ripe fruition the work already achieved in the primary school ? The salaries and staffs question being settled for a time, it is suggested by teachers and others that the syllabus, generally styled the " overcrowded syllabus," should be set upon for curtailment and amendment. It is urged that the .pressure of so many subjects impairs efficiency in the three Rs. We question if there is much in this contention. It is true the syllabus looks overcrowded, but the overcrowding is more seeming than real ; for some of the so-called subjects are only different aspects of the same subject, or are old subjects under new names, and the teacher is expected to select from the abundance of matter set out in the syllabus just what is adapted to the circumstances of his school. He is