E.—9a,

2

learns no Latin, has passed the Sixth Standard, and is close on sixteen. He devotes four hours to geography in the manner that has just been described, and one to gymnastics (in addition to the hour he spends in the gymnasium with his form) I have said enough to show that the few exceptional cases of what I may call non-Latin boys are treated with exceptional and individual consideration. I may have put too narrow a construction upon the term ' commercial side" I will therefore adopt another point of view and proceed to show how far the time-tables and the general organization of the schools have been adapted to recent circumstances, to local requirements, and to the demand for a modernisation of the " modern side " of which the school now consists. As to the time-tables, without entering into perplexing details of the differences as between the several forms, I may divide the twenty-five hours of the week according to what may fairly be called the type of work in this school. Under the head of the "old learning" I include Latin and mathematics. Arithmetic I exclude for the present, but trigonometry—comparatively modern—l put under mathematics. Latin takes up five hours a week, except in the Upper and Lower Sixth, where it occupies six and seven hours respectively To mathematics five hours are devoted. In an intermediate place I put English (the language and collateral subjects, such as geography and history) with five hours, and arithmetic with two hours. As most of the boys have passed the Sixth Standard, two hours seems to be sufficient for arithmetic, but more time than this is given to it in special cases, and less when the pupils have made good progress in mathematics. Under English I take in writing, which is systematically taught in the lower part of the school, and is so far from being neglected in the upper part that if any boy is found to be declining in his writing —and this will sometimes be the case where there are many exercises to write and some are hurried—he is sent back to a writing class. History, I may say, is not very diligently cultivated. Science and drawing may be regarded as essentially modern subjects. To each of these subjects two hours a week are devoted, except that modern science is not taught in the Lower Form (Third), and drawing is not taught in the Sixth and Upper Fifth. French occupies three hours a week in all the forms. German is optional in the Sixth and Upper Fifth, and is taught out of school-hours. One hour is given to gymnastics, a very modern subject, but I fear a very important one to many boys who have worked hard to obtain Board scholarships or free tuition. I find that bookkeeping has long been taught in the school, and that in two forms it is now made a class-subject. It has its uses as an exercise in neat writing, and as giving boys some idea of the distinction between cash-book and ledger, and between the debtor and creditor sides of an account, and of the meaning of a balance , but it must be borne in mind that almost every firm of any consequence must have a method of bookkeeping adapted to the general and to the special character of its business, and that a boy's mental training in a high school should be such as to make it very easy for him to acquire in the office the technical knowledge necessary to a clerk. The present organization of the school is controlled by the relation that the High School sustains to the primary school, and in this respect the change that has taken place between the date of my first annual visit to the school and the date of this (the sixteenth) visit is very remarkable. In the old days there was a First Form in the school, and a Second, and a Lower Third, and an Upper Third. Of these there is now only one in existence—the Third, formerly called the Upper Third. The reason of this change is that now almost all the pupils come from the primary schools, and most of them have there passed the Sixth Standard , many, indeed, have remained there a year or more after passing the Sixth. The youngest boy now in the school will be twelve years old next month. Exclusive of a few sick boys who have not been at school this term, the number of pupils is now 200, and not less than 136 have passed the Sixth Standard in public schools, while twentytwo left the public schools after passing the Fifth Standard, and eleven after passing the Fourth. This leaves thirty-one boys who may be called High School boys proper, but even among these thirty-one there are four who have been at primary schools, and have passed some standard below the Fourth. These thirty-one boys are distributed among the forms as follows Third Form, 5 , Bemove, 5 , Lower Fourth, 3 , Upper Fourth, 6 , Lower Fifth, 2 ; Upper Fifth, 7 , Lower Sixth, 1, Upper Sixth 2. The extreme case of reliance on the primary school is found in the Upper Sixth. It is a case of a boy nearly seventeen, who entered in February last to be specially prepared for a university examination. Fifteen years ago the form a boy was in depended chiefly on the progress he had made in Latin and mathematics, and the trouble was to know what to do with boys—then reckoned lop-sided—who knew nothing of these subjects, but who, coming in with scholarships, were too old and too much advanced in primary-school subjects to be placed near the bottom of the school. Now, a boy's place in the school, except in the highest forms, is determined by his knowledge of English (and collateral subjects) and of arithmetic. The Fourth Form boy is not necessarily in the Fourth Form in Latin or in French. The whole school is simultaneously occupied with Latin for five hours a week, and the classes for Latin do not correspond to the forms in which the boys are placed for other purposes. Each boy goes to the Latin class for which he is fit, and a boy in leaving a lower class in which he has done well may be promoted to a class above the next to that in which he has been taught. Similarly, all the French classes (including the whole school) are engaged at French at the same hour, and a boy is classified especially for French according to the progress he has made. I have shown that a large share of the school-time is devoted to subjects that were not formerly much cultivated in grammar schools, and that the most elementary parts of some of these subjects are fairly well known to most of the pupils when they enter I now add that the most backward pupils in these subjects are not neglected. I found Mr Williams, who teaches English, French, and German with admirable ability and earnestness in the upper part of the school, engaged (as prescribed by the time-table) in instructing the very lowest form in English grammar. A few of the most backward pupils in arithmetic have, since the beginning of the present term, presented a slight difficulty to the management. They were not quite fit for either of the divisions of