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exempt from inspection, and this state of things cannot very well be avoided. The system now in force involves a great deal of labour on Inspectors, and recent changes have distinctly increased its amount, no doubt unintentionally. I am informed on the best authority that the labour of examining schools in our colony is three times as great as that required to examine similar schools in England or Scotland. I mention this to show that a superficial comparison of the numbers of pupils to each Inspector, in different countries and under different systems, is no real test of the amount or merit of the work done in examining schools. The arrangements for training young teachers have received much careful consideration from my colleagues and myself during the year. We agreed in thinking that the arrangements for giving them practice in teaching, under favourable circumstances, could be much improved ; and we had the honour to submit to the Board the proposals which have since been embodied in the new regulations of the Training College. I strongly advised the Board to make provision at the Training College for teaching up to the level of the C certificate, and I greatly regret that this has not been done. Hitherto the students in training have attended classes at the Otago University, with a view to qualifying for the C certificate. The results, however, have not been particularly satisfactory. The actual facts are not easy to ascertain ; but lam sure lam wdthin the mark in saying that during the last eight years not more than three students in training have taken a C certificate within three years of the time when they matriculated. With ordinary good fortune such a certificate might be taken the second year after matriculation. I need not inquire into the causes of the failure to secure for young teachers a fair measure of higher education. It will suffice to point out that the failure is conspicuous and indisputable. If the Training College here were equipped with such a staff as is allowed at a similar institution in Christchurch I am confident that the teaching could easily be made to include all the subjects required for a C certificate, and that within three years after the students entered the Training College five would gain a C certificate for one that does so under existing arrangements. While the syllabus of instruction in the public schools was under consideration by the Education Department I ventured to recommend, in a private way, that the literary examination in school management, to which teachers are now subjected, should be supplemented by a practical test in teaching and managing a class in the presence of an expert, who would decide whether he should be admitted or rejected. I thought then, and I think now, that young teachers will continue to be satisfied with being able to talk or write about the teaching and management of classes so long as that is all that is exacted of them. It is vastly easier to do that than to do what every teacher needs to be able to do—namely, to maintain order and attention among his pupils with firmness and ease, and to teach them in such a way as to train and educate the powers of the mind. Who can wonder that, in these circumstances, a student should often be indifferent about the acquisition of practical skill in teaching and managing classes ? The mere passing of a written examination opens to him the doors of the public schools, and lets him begin what now and then proves the sad and painful process of learning how to do the work he can write about so easily. I hold that incompetent teachers should be stopped at the threshold. They can be tested, and. they should bo tested, and those who are unfit should be shut out at once. If they are once admitted to classification their elimination will be indefinitely retarded, and much harm will be done in the process. To be sure, the Education Department claims that the issue of certificates depends only in part on passing an examination ; but, so far as I know, the grounds on which such a claim rests are of the most meagre character. In the regulations mention is made of a testimonial signed by a school Inspector, or by the principal of a training institution, certifying to the candidate's fitness to teach and to exercise control. No Inspector in this district has over been asked to give such a testimonial, and I believe, so far as Inspectors are concerned, this vital provision is a dead letter. It is elsew 7here provided that Inspectors shall annually assign efficiency marks to all teachers, these marks ranging from 2 to 10. I understand that the efficiency marks have been received as a substitute for the testimonial of fitness, the result being that any one, whether fit or unfit, can receive a certificate; for the Inspectors are not allowed to withhold marks altogether, but must assign 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10, according to their judgment of the teacher's efficiency, and even tw To marks suffice for the issue of a certificate. lam of opinion that the testimonial of fitness should be insisted on in the case of all candidates for the office of teacher, and I should like to see them received only from Inspectors; for, though principals of training institutions are doubtless quite as competent to judge of this matter, they are much more liable to bo influenced by personal feelings towards those who are their own students, and on whose success in gaining certificates their own credit to a certain extent rests. Nothing would do more to foster the attainment of skill in teaching and exercising control than insisting upon a strict practical test of these qualities soon after the examination is held, and before a candidate can receive classification and be recognized as qualified to conduct any school. In case of rejection by one Inspector the candidate should have a second trial before another, and if he fails a second time he should be rejected finally. In Victoria such a test has been applied for years past, with most salutary effects. And who can doubt that this is the chief reason why, with a system of elementary education considerably inferior to ours, newly-trained teachers hailing from that colony are, at first, so much superior to the average of those trained here ? Every year it becomes more and more evident that some suitable provision for revising the classification of teachers is indispensable. As things now stand a teacher who has once gained high marks for efficiency can never have his status lowered, no matter how the quality of his work may deteriorate. In several cases, after careful and impartial consideration, my colleagues and myself have felt constrained to lower the efficiency marks assigned to teachers. If lower marks are thus assigned for two or three years in succession it seems to me most desirable that some means should be provided for reconsidering the classification of the teachers concerned. Why should not the Inspector-General of Schools be empowered to visit and, if he think fit, examine the schools of