E.—2

10

school; in 1909 the grants to eleven Boards for conveyance by road and water amounted to =£2,755, as against £1,005 in 1908. The Grey and Westland Boards did not arrange for the conveyance of school-children in this manner. The six districts in which the plan was most used were Auckland, Wellington, North and South Canterbury, Otago, and Southland. The total amount paid for the conveyance of pupils in 1909 was thus £15,941. Board of School-children. —A similar allowance —namely, 2s. (sd. a week — is made, on the approval of the Minister, in aid of the board of any child who, through the impracticability of conveyance, has to live away from home in order to attend a public school. In 1909 £138 was paid for the board of schoolchildren whilst attending public schools. Further reference to this matter is made on page 39. Fret School-books. The grant that was available for the purchase of free text-books for pupils in the preparatory classes and in Standards I and II was accepted by Education Boards with the exception of two, who were unable to comply with the conditions attached to the grant. These Boards have now notified the Department that they have accepted the grant for these classes for the current year. At the close of the financial year 1909-10 (three months after the close of the school year) in no case had a Board applied for the total amount available, and it would therefore appear that the grant is sufficient to cover the cost of the necessary books. The principle of the free supply of text-books was last session extended to Standard 111, and a sum was included in the vote for elementary education to defray the cost. The payment to Boards is 3s. per pupil, based upon the roll number for the current year (1910). This amount is considered ample to provide miscellaneous readers, arithmetic books, and supplementary readers, due regard being paid to the needs of the smaller country schools, where the teachers have to rely upon books in history and geography more than is considered necessary in the larger schools. The following appeared in last year's report: " The alternative proposed [to free school-books] —viz., the adoption of a uniform series of reading-books— was strongly condemned by nearly all the experts consulted, as tending to a cast-iron uniformity of method. If such a series, moreover, were to be published in the Dominion, the expense of publication would be out of all proportion to the benefits sought to be gained, if the quality of the books bore any sort of comparison with that of corresponding books produced by leading firms in Great Britain ; and the cost of renewal from time to time, to bring the contents up to date, would be almost prohibitive." The School Journal, Bfc. The School Journal has now completed its third year of issue, the first number having been published in May, 1907. It is published in three parts— viz., Part I (sixteen pages), for Classes I and II; Part II (sixteen pages), for Classes 111 and IV; and Part 111 (thirty-two pages), for Classes V and VI. There are no issues for December and January, but the November number is enlarged to provide reading-matter until the schools close, about the middle of December. For each year there are 168 pages in each of Parts I and 11, and 336 pages in Part 111. Public schools, Native schools, special schools (such as industrial schools), and certain institutions more or less under departmental control or supervision, are supplied with copies free, and an increasing number of private and secondary schools purchase copies at the rate of per copy for Part I, and Id. per copy for each of Parts II and 111. The monthly free distribution to children is (June, 1910) —Part I, 41,089 ; Part 11, 39,544; Part 111, 32,949. The sales are at the rate of 24,260 per annum for all parts. The public schools are supplied with sufficient copies to provide for every child on the rolls of the various classes one copy of the appropriate Part of the Journal, Part I, IT, or 111, as the case may be.