E.—2.

Conclusion. The Inspectors' reports show that the standard of teaching reached during the year continued to be of a very high average quality, in spite of the many difficulties caused by the epidemic. Many staffs of the closed schools made valiant attempts to carry on by means of correspondence lessons, in some cases with the aid of the local newspapers, but pupils and teachers alike were glad to see the reopening of the schools. For the Inspectors, too, the year has been a very trying one, and I feel grateful for the very efficient way in which they have carried on in my long absence. I have, &c., E. J. Pake, Chief Inspector of Secondary Schools. The Director of Education, Wellington.

3. REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION. As this is the last report which I shall make as Superintendent of Technical Education, it may not be out oi place for me to present a short review of some points which have emerged from my experience of fifteen years as Director of the Wellington Technical School, followed by nineteen years as Superintendent of Technical Education. During the whole of this time my work has been closely connected with all phases of manual and technical instruction as conducted under regulations first issued under the 1900 Act. So far as handwork and drawing in the primary schools were concerned, the technical and art schools provided, during the last decade of the nineteenth and the first decade of the present century, training for teachers in drawing and handwork, usually on Saturday mornings, besides which, in some districts, there was a system of supervision of drawing in the primary schools, with somewhat elaborate arrangements for annual examinations. Manual-training classes in woodwork and cookery were begun in the first years of the present century, and conducted largely through the technical schools, which were at that time more directly under the District Education Boards. With the establishment of Technical School Boards largely independent of their controlling authorities, and the development in the Teachers' Training Colleges of special courses in handwork and drawing, the close connection which technical schools had with handwork and manual training in the primary schools has largely disappeared in the main centres, but has continued in some smaller centres, though mainly as regards woodwork and cookery, &c., for Forms I and 11. The place of handwork in the infant school has become firmly established during the last thirty years, and the essential conditions for its right content and treatment are being more generally recognized as the psychology of the world of infant life becomes better understood. In the comparatively stable period of child life lying between infancy and the onset of adolescence, handwork has also received considerably more attention during the last thirty years. It may, however, be doubted whether too much weight is not still given to direct disciplinary preparation of an academic type for adult life and too little to more indirect methods of shunting the energies of the child into suitable channels and of sublimating rather than repressing the less civilized characteristics of its racial inheritance. It is hoped that the abolition of the Proficiency Examination will give teachers the necessary freedom to develop the curricula of their pupils with due regard to these important matters. Thus for both the infant and the elder child the school world has become more real, more closely connected with its life and interests, and also with the adult world, of which in so many aspects the child is surprisingly aware. Fifty years ago children were apprenticed to trades at nine years of age. To-day few are apprenticed before they reach the age of fourteen or fifteen years, though children of thirteen may go to work if they have completed their primary-school course. The compulsory school age will soon be raised to fifteen. In some States it is already eighteen, in many sixteen. The problem of the education of the adolescent is therefore not so much one of choosing the right types of training for a fixed proportion of the youth of the country, but of providing for rapidly changing groups and a continually growing fraction of the total population. In 1912 there were 2,114 students in the University; in 1937 there were 4,462. In 1912 there were 5,542 pupils in secondary schools, 1,815 in district high schools, 1,526 in technical day schools ; in 1937 there were 14,101 in secondary schools, 2,113 in combined schools, 4,389 in district high Schools, and 7,833 in technical high schools. The population of the Dominion increased from 1,115,069 in 1912 to 1,573,927 in 1936. On the average, pupils stay two years nine months in secondary schools, two years three months in district high schools, and two years one month in technical high schools. For the adolescent, who is beginning to put away childish things and to turn eager eyes towards the interests and occupations of the adult world, it is even more necessary than for the primary-school child that the school, which for the great majority is taking the place of the early apprentice training inherited from the stone age, should be closely representatve of adult conditions and occupations. Indeed, where the abilities and interests of an adolescent mark him out for a particular occupation ox group of occupations, the last two to five years of his training in school and college may well be devoted to a special study of the science and art of his chosen occupation. This has, of course, been

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