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(d) Housing Schemes. —State housing schemes are developing whole new cities* for which a full range of school accommodation must be provided within a very short period. This is creating in such areas as the Hutt Valley and Tamaki school-building problems that are taxing to the limit the normal organization for the erecting of schools.It has been estimated that over the next two years the Department will have toerect 100 new class-rooms, plus all subsidiary accommodation, in the Hutt Valley alone. (e) The Return of the Five-year-olds to School in 1936. —This resulted in a " wave ' r of school entrants that passed right through the primary school, creating accommodationproblems as it went, and reached the post-primary school in 1944-45. Its influence will have passed in a year or two. (f) The raising of the School Age to fifteen in 1944. (g) The Tendency of Parents in the Past Two or Three Years to keep their Children on longer at Post-primary School. (h) A Reduction in the Size of Classes introduced in 1946 in both primary and post-primary schools. (i) The Increase in the Native-school Population.—ln 1929 there were 132 Native schools with 6,951 children enrolled ; in 1946 there are 158 schools and 12,060 pupils. (j) Obsolescence of many Schools erected in the early days (1878 onwards) of the national school system. The life-cycle of the schools erected up to about 1890 is now complete or nearing completion. 11. Implications for the Future Table No. 121 shows a double peak in the yearly number of births, one in 1941 and the other in 1945, which, if one may judge from the number of marriages, has probably not yet reached its highest point. The children born in 1940-41 would normally enter the infant-room in 1945-46, and -will pass through the school system, creating pressure on accommodation at every stage. Since the curve does not drop very rapidly after 1941, the problems will be cumulative over a number of years. The Department must plan to have sufficient post-primary-school accommodation for this peak group by 1952-54. But it so happens that those are just the years when the Department will have to be prepared to accommodate the greatly increased numbers of infants born in 1945-46. In view of existing building difficulties, the task of meeting this double demand over the next five or six years will not be an easy one. Under present conditions it appears that any sudden marked increase in the school-building programme can take place only at the expense of other building works. The degree of additional strain thrown on the school accommodation by any policy of large-scale immigration would depend in part upon the distribution throughout New Zealand of the immigrants. Any concentration in the cities, particularly those in the North Island, would create a very serious school problem. Since the demand for school accommodation is determined largely by the " peak load " much would depend also upon the rate of immigration. Intensive immigration over one or two years would create a demand much greater than the same intake spread over a longer period. B. SUPPLY OF TEACHERS The supply of teachers is at present short, in spite of the Education Department's having, over the past few years, trained some two hundred a year above normal requirements for replacements. The majority of the trainees were, during the war,, necessarily women, and the rate of resignation owing to marriage has been very high. The staffing situation will improve somewhat when the returned soldier teachers all go back to work, but any excess will be immediately absorbed in what is recognized as the most pressing educational reform —the reduction in the size of classes. The four teachers' training colleges are full to capacity.

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