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greatest number of successful candidates in Standard IV.; and the Buckle Street Boys' School was distinguished by the rapid rise in higher standard work. The Te Aro School produced the best arithmetician of the year, and generally did better work in the upper class under Mr. Gordon, and improved work in all departments. The Standard I. results of this school are good, and the other standard results about equal to the average of the whole district. In the Thorndon and Te Aro Schools, half an hour each day is taken from the ordinary school hours for the teaching of subjects not included in the standards. The teachers, therefore, in these schools were under a disadvantage in competing with other schools for standard results. The results of the Buckle Street Girls' School are low ; but this arises not from the want of good teaching, but from the want of good schools for girls in past years. With the efficient staff of teachers in this school, I feel sure the results year by year will compare more favourably with those of the boys' and mixed schools of the city. The numbers have doubled in the last half-year. Mrs. Francis, who has been appointed to the new infant school, will, I trust, prove an excellent manager and teacher for so large a school. Besides the city schools, there are six country schools in the Wellington District, each having more than 120 children on the roll —Masterton, Greytown, Featherston, Lower Hutt. Upper Hutt, and Carterton. The Lower Hutt School shows the best results. The Featherston and Upper Hutt Schools have done exceedingly good work under the present management. I was disappointed with the general results in the Masterton School, especially with the arithmetic, but the reading and oral instruction were decidedly good. The school has suffered from serious drawbacks, such as a large and sudden increase of pupils, want of sufficient accommodation to meet the increased numbers, and rather weak teaching power for the lower classes. Larger accommodation is being provided, and more assistance will be supplied as soon as possible: I shall therefore hope for better results next year. In the Greytown School there has been good teaching power for all the classes, a competent assistant master, a fifth-year pupil-teacher, and a second-year pupil-teacher. The attendance has been steady; the school has been subject to no extraordinary drawbacks; and yet the work on the whole has certainly fallen off. There has been, I think, a want of judgment in apportioning the work, so that each teacher has been burdened with the work of two grades instead of being confined to a larger class for one grade. The headmaster has aimed too much at passing a few higher-standard candidates, and he has pressed them on too hurriedly with their work. The character of the important work was in cases unsatisfactory. There was an absence of expression in reading; there was a want of method and neatness in the work presented on slates; copy-books were in some classes carelessly written and much defaced; and old habits of threading penholders through slits made in the covers of copy-books are still encouraged. With careful teaching of intelligent reading, judicious classification, inculcation of habits of neatness, and a fair apportioning of work among the teachers with fixed responsibility, a very great improvement in the school might be hoped for. The results, though falling off, are not altogether unsatisfactory, especially in Standard 1., and the school has done comparatively better work in the past. The Carterton School is in a very unsatisfactory condition. The general character of the work is unimproved. There was no section of the work uniformly good. The reading particularly was lame, mechanical, and devoid of all expression. The results are exceedingly low, although the head teacher has been five years in charge. The following schools are attended by over 50 and less than 100 children: Clareville, Taita, Karori, Tawa Flat, Johnsonville, Kaiwara, and Pahautanui. Of these, the Tawa Flat School well maintains the leading position, under the painstaking and successful teaching of Mr. Home. The Clareville, Taita, and Kaiwara Schools were all still low in results, but they are under much better management, and with good prospects of better work being done. I was much disappointed with Johnsonville School, although the teacher has been only a few months in charge. The Karori School presents nearly the same features as last year. Satisfactory work is done in the lower classes only. There was a breakdown in the arithmetic of most of the candidates for Standards 11. and 111., aud the work of the same candidates was unsatisfactory in spelling, geography, and grammar. Pahautanui School continues in a fairly satisfactory condition. Of the smaller schools those at Waihenga, Kaiwaiwai, Fern Ridge, and Ohariu are in a very satisfactory condition. In the Waihenga School, the reading and recitation were given carefully, and with taste and expression; the writing was beautifully neat, uniform in style, and showed very careful teaching; the arithmetic was remarkably accurate, and very orderly in arrangement; tables were well known ; the classes were intelligent, the general knowledge was good, and the general neatness and order were admirable. The work so far as it went at Fern Ridge was exceedingly well presented. It is this quality of work which is valuable, and which appears to be lost sight of in Greytown and Carterton; but it is well cultivated in Featherston and Kaiwaiwai. The results at North Makara, except in reading, are very fair; but at South Makara they are very poor. The style of work is not good. The results at Korokoro, Horokiwi Valley, Porirua, and Kaitara, I consider fairly satisfactory under their several conditions. Trained Teachers required. In comparatively few schools is the work that of a teacher trained for his profession. The contrast between a school working with good method, and that of a school uuder an untrained or unprogressive teacher, is very great. It surely must be an established truth in educational as in other matters that, if the work is to be done, it should be well done, and to attempt the work without skilled labour simply means that it will be imperfectly done. I have already had the pleasure of recommending a scheme for beginning the work of normal training which has been embodied in your report to the Minister of Education, and which I trust will be adopted. Many of the teachers in charge of schools would be glad of an opportunity of seeing the work of model schools, and of learning the best methods of imparting instruction. This also could be arranged for. That one large training college for the colony would do the best work there can be no douht; but practically such an arrangement would not, I fear, be generally acceptable, aud the loss of time in bringing it about would be a matter of serious consideration. lam therefore of opinion that, in the educational interests of this district, it would be best to ask