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The amount paid on this account for railway fares in the years 1911 and 1912 was as follows : — 1911. 1912. £ £ Primary pupils .. .. ..... .. 4,753 3,648 Pupils attending—■ (a.) Secondary schools .. .. .. .. 2,308 1,740 (b.) District high schools .. .. .. .. 1,426 1,223 (c.) Technical schools .. .. .. .. 4,359 3,604 £12,846 £10,215 Conveyance by Road and Water. —By section 44 (c) of the Education Act Boards are empowered to arrange, where necessary, for the conveyance of children to and from school, and conveyance by road or water is accordingly arranged in districts where the population is widely scattered, and the necessary facilities for conveyance are obtainable. The Taranaki, Grey, and Westland Boards did not arrange for conveyance. In the more closely settled districts of the South Island — North Canterbury, South Canterbury, Otago, and Southland —this plan for conveyance was very much more widely adopted than in any other district in New Zealand. The total amount paid in 1912 to ten Education Boards for conveyance by road and water amounted to £4,466, as against £4,297 in the previous year. The total amount paid for conveyance of pupils to public schools in 1912 by rail, road, and water was therefore £14,691, as against £17,143 in 1911. Board of School-children. —ln aid of the board of any child who, on account of distance or the absence of roads, has to live away from home in order to attend a public school, an allowance of 2s. 6d. per week is similarly made. In 1912 £442 was paid for the board of school-children, as against £354 in 1911. Physical Education. Recognizing that one of the highest aims of State education is to fit the child for a useful and active life of citizenship with a well-balanced personality in which the physical, mental, and moral qualities are equally developed and disciplined, the Government decided to introduce a sound system of physical education more complete than had been in existence before. Accordingly, last session it proposed and Parliament passed certain amendments in the Education Act designed to carry out this purpose. The Junior Cadet organization, though excellent in some respects, was not suited to provide the desired physical training ; moreover, it affected only some 29,000 boys, at a cost of about £8,000 per annum, and did not provide any training for girls. 1 The scheme of physical education which has been substituted for the Junior Cadet training is calculated to affect beneficially all children attending the primary, Native, and special schools in the Dominion, in all some 180,000 children of both sexes, at about the same total cost. A Director of Physical Education was appointed in November, 1912, and he was instructed to proceed to Australia to inquire into the efficiency and working of a similar syllabus of training recently established in the Commonwealth. During the present year (1913) ten instructors have been appointed, and they will also act as Inspectors of Physical Training under the Act. The first important part of the work has been the training of teachers ; classes of instruction have already been held with marked success in several education districts ; and before long the great majority of teachers will have received some degree of training in the new system, which is based, with some slight modifications, on the syllabus of physicalexercises for schools issued by the English Board of Education in 1909. Medical Inspection of School-childhkn During the year the scheme for the medical inspection of schools and schoo 1 children was brought into operation. It is under the joint control of the Education Department and the Department of Public Health. Four Medical Inspectors were appointed, one being stationed at each of the four chief centres. They began in September last the work of inspecting schools and school-children in the various education districts.

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