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rnent aid which it receives in the shape of a capitation-fee of £18 per annum on al pupils sent by the Government, and an absolute grant-in-aid of £200 per annum. Very great improvements have been made in connection with this school during the last few years in the way of providing new and better dormitories, of affording greater facilities for personal cleanliness, and, generally, of making the way of life of the pupils approximate more closely to that of Europeans. The instruction given is, on the whole, sound and good; much of it is very satisfactory indeed, but, until quite lately, the amount of teaching power has been rather small, and consequently the quantity of viva voce as compared with that of written work has been insufficient. There is now a suitable assistant, whose help will enable the head-master to devote more attention to purely educational work. It is surprising that so much good work has been done here and done so well without assistance. Special mention may be made of the boys' knowledge of drill and their skill in gymnastic exercises, both of which are worthy of high commendation. The drawing, too, is good, but the singing, which promised so well a year or two ago, is rather disappointing. A good deal of attention is paid to industrial work ; the boys all learn to cook, many are able to use carpenters' tools, and all of them take part in such agricultural operations as can bo carried on within the limits of the grounds on which the institution stands. Boys who have gone through the school course, are, on leaving, sometimes apprenticed to trades. In all cases thus dealt with boys learn 'something that will be of use to them, and in some instances the experiment has been thoroughly successful. Miscellaneous. Expenditure. —A statement of the expenditure incurred in connection with Native schools and a statement of the way in which this expenditure has been distributed will be found in Tables Nos.' 1 and 2of the Appendix. Of the total net Government expenditure on Native schools, £21,653 (shillings and pence are neglected), the sum of £14,090 was paid for salaries and allowances, inspection, general school requisites, travelling, and other ordinary expenditure in connection with village schools ; the remainder defrayed the cost of boarding-schools (£1,813); building, fencing, and furniture ; of a portion of the cost of the school at the Chatham Islands ; and of grants to Education Boards.- Beckoned on the basis of the strict average for the year (2,137'73) the cost per head of the children 'attending Native village schools was £6 11s. 9d. If the total population of New Zealand is 650,000 the share per head of the total expenditure on Native education is almost exactly Bd. Table No. 3 gives the ages of the children on the books of the Native village and subsidised schools at the end of the December quarter. It will be seen that 91-83 per cent, are between the ages of five and fifteen. Table No. 4 gives statistics of the year's attendance. The working average for 1887 was 2,247-39, as compared with 2,019-73 for 1886. The strict average for 1887 was 2,137-73, against 1,953-23 for 1886. From Table swe learn that the percentage of children who are Maoris, in the sense defined by the code, to those who are either Europeans or quarter-castes has risen from 71"06 to 74-99. Tables Nos. 6 and 7 show the examination and inspection results respectively for the'year. There is again an increase in the number of passes in the higher standards, the numbers for Standards 111. and IV. being 148 and 68 for 1887, against 112 and 64 for 1886. Last year seventeen schools gained over 70 per cent, at inspection; this year twenty-three schools obtained the distinction. As a rule, none but able teachers can secure such a position for their schools; but, on the other hand, external circumstances may sometimes cause even the best teachers to miss it. The Teaching of English. The work of teaching the Maoris to speak, write, and understand English is in im" portance second only to that of making them acquainted with European customs and ways of thinking, and so fitting them for becoming orderly and law-abiding citizens. Indeed, it might be maintained that the first-named of these operations is the more important, seeing that the knowledge of English ways can hardly be obtained by Natives unacquainted with the language. To teach the Natives English is therefore the raison d'etre of Native schools. If they do this work well their existence is justified; if not, there can be little advantage in maintaining a separate order of schools for this purpose. The task is one of extreme difficulty for many reasons; the Maori language is so fundamentally different from the English that, to say nothing of hereditary aptitudes, the Maori, from the time that he begins to speak and think has his vocal organs and thinking faculties moulded in such a way that he could hardly be rendered more unfitted for speaking English and using it as an instrument of thought if his vernacular had been specially devised for that very purpose. As instances of the kind of difficulty thus caused it may be mentioned that, speaking generally, distinctions of number, the use of the copula, and time distinctions in verbs are an abomination to the Maori. Most people are aware that attempts to learn French or German, even with the aid of a good master, are seldom rewarded by very marked success, except in cases in which the pupil has had. the advantage of hearing the new language constantly spoken, and has had little or no opportunity of falling back upon his own language. Masters of Native schools are constantly hampered by the difficulty caused by their pupils' training in the use of Maori being continued along with the training in English that they are receiving from their teachers. It is hardly to be wondered at, then, if a Maori boy of fifteen, who has been six or seven years at school, is only tolerably successful in speaking and writing English. It seems to me, indeed, that the success achieved by our best schools is very remarkable, and that it speaks well for the intelligence and energy of the teachers. Nevertheless, no effort should be spared to secure improvement in this direction. With this end in view it has been decided to insist on a very stringent reading of the standards as far as English is concerned, and to allow no pupil to pass a standard who does not do well in that subject. The kind of improvement aimed at is to be obtained by persistent drill, especially in the lower standards ; long after the child's- knowledge of what is needed is complete he must have constant practice in the use of that knowledge, and this must be continued until the use becomes automatic. For the higher standards there must be abundant translation and 2—E. 2.