7

E.—2

Notwithstanding this great drawback fairly satisfactory progress is being made by the schools in the district. Two or three of these are now very good indeed, and nearly all of them are improving more or less. The schools in the neighbourhood of Tauranga, where the District Superintendent's influence is constantly felt, are likely to be very successful. Maketu. —An aided Board school has been established hero. It may be objected that this step has been taken prematurely, seeing that difficulty is experienced in keeping up the attendance without the aid of some of the half-caste children of the district; but the effect on the Native school has been good. The Natives now certainly take more interest in their school and the education of their children than they did before the new r school was established. The master is quite an enthusiast about Native children and their capabilities, and thinks, now that he has only Natives to deal with, that he will be able to do better work than he has ever done before. Te Awahou. —As far as buildings and appliances are concerned Te Awahou is now in a very satisfactory position ; the Natives, too, deserve great credit for their efforts to keep up a good attendance at the school. There seems, indeed, to be now no reason why, with a proper amount of energy and hard work, the teachers should not make this one of our most satisfactory schools. Ohinemutu. —Very little real good has ever yet been done at this school; this is owing to the extreme irregularity of the attendance, caused by the numerous attractions presented by the hot baths and by the constant influx of visitors, with plenty of spare time and money, who are generally willing to pay for such amusement as the Native children can afford them by running, swimming, diving, and so forth. If any master can succeed here the present one should, seeing that he is an accomplished artist and a very fair musician, and spares no pains to make his school attractive to the young people. When he has had a little more practice in teaching Native children, he will, I feel sure, be able to do about the best that can be done for the young Natives of this district. Botoiti. —The master of this school takes great pride in it and in the progress made by his pupils; but the school is unsatisfactory in two very important respects : The attendance is not exactly irregular, but it is fitful —sometimes there is a large attendance for weeks together, and then it is reduced almost to nothing ; secondly, when there is a good attendance it is maintained to a certain extent in an irregular way. The intention of the master is very good indeed. The parents of the children here seem to be poor, and they are certainly very improvident. The children consequently often come to school hungry. It is no easy task for a man of kindly and benevolent disposition to be constantly with children that are in a half-starved condition without wishing to feed them. The master, then, gives them a meal; the next day this is repeated, and so on. In the end the children get to look upon this as the normal condition of affairs, and so do the parents. By-and-by perhaps these too get to think that they should have a share of such good things as may be going. The master at last finds that he has laid a very heavy burden upon himself without doing the slightest good to the children, the parents, or himself. There is this additional evil result: such masters of neighbouring schools as wisely refuse to act in the same way get to be looked upon by the Natives with more or less dislike and distrust. It is plain that the practice of feeding the children attending a Native school should be discontinued except in cases in which they •perform a definite amount of work and receive a meal as payment. A master should do the best he can in every way to help the Natives to help themselves ; but to feed their children for them is to give them a premium for neglecting one of their most important duties, and to effectually prevent them from gaining a just idea of their responsibilities in this matter. Lake Tarawera. —Seeing that people from every district of the colony—and, indeed, from all parts of the world—visit this school, it is very important that it should be a good one ; and so it is— one of the very best. The only weak point is the building in which the school-work has to be done. It is to be regretted that the two tribes here cannot agree to sink their petty differences and combine to give a title to the school-site, so that the Government may be in a position to make the schoolbuildings inferior to none in the colony. At the last examination even higher results than usual were obtained here. Maungatapn. —A most satisfactory revival has taken place in connection with this school since the fever has been fairly got rid of; it will now probably be permanently successful. After the serious mortality experienced last year, it is hardly to be expected that the large attendance originally anticipated will be secured—for some time to come, at any rate; but it is likely that when the school has settled down to its proper working form, an average of from thirty to thirtyfive may be depended upon. Paeroa. —This school is some five miles from Tauranga. It has been worked as a half-time school along with that at Huria. Arrangements have been made of a nature somewhat similar to those adopted in the case of Otamatea and Oruawharo, with the difference that both of the Tauranga schools will be worked the full time. A small building has been erected here, and there is no doubt that the school will be useful, providing as it does for the wants of over fifty children, most of whom would grow up quite illiterate without this provision. Huria. —lt is perhaps to be regretted that it was found necessary to put up a small building here, when the distance from the nearest Board school is only some two miles. But there was really no help for it; the Huria children did not go to school, and probably never would have gone. As soon as even a very rough sort of school was opened for the Native children alone, they attended with laudable regularity. It was soon found that it would be advisable to put up a suitable small school and work it along with that at Paeroa, which is somewhat similarly circumstanced. I have no doubt that the new arrangement for these two schools will work satisfactorily ; a healthy rivalry is almost sure to spring up between the two schools, to the manifest advantage of both of them. Bay of Plenty (East). Mr. B. S. Bush, 8.M., Opotiki, is Superintendent of this district. Nearly all the schools under Mr. Bush's care are in very good order; some of them are really capital schools. A pleasing feature of the progress made in this district is that in several cases the Natives living near the larger