"R.— 2

12

the six well, and two very well —shows that there is no ground for complaint. All the Fourth Standard girls passed; there were six of them. The arithmetic paper was rather easy, and the girls made short work of it. There was only one weak spot; errors occurred in the spelling of past tenses and past participles of verbs and of the regular plurals of nouns. In the three lower standards the work was simply first rate. Twenty-eight girls passed ; that is, all of them. The preparatory class, too, is very good as far as it goes. On the whole, the examination work shown was very highly satisfactory. Probably owing to sickness and death that occurred at St. Joseph's before the holidays, the attendance has temporarily been greatly reduced. The Mission School, Waerenga-a-Hika (examined 25th May, 1898). —The order here is decidedly good—greatly improved since previous visits took place; at the same time, the rule is genial, and the boys work heartily and are on good terms with their teacher. The extra subjects, and especially singing and drill, are very well taught. The talking of Maori in school has now been nearly abolished, and the English work has made a corresponding advance. The numerical results of the examination are as follows: Three passed Standard IV.; five passed Standard 111. ; seven passed Standard II.; five passed Standard I.—twenty in all passed. The school is decidedly strong now ; it ought to be, seeing that the master works exceedingly hard to make and keep it so. The Convent School, Mataia (examined, 23rd June, 1898). —The order has improved. Parents show their interest in the school by occasional visits to it; the relations between teachers and children are good. The extra subjects are well taught, especially the drill and the drawing; also, church music is well sung. There has been decided improvement in the methods. The teachers show closer acquaintance with the special needs of Maori children, with the proper means of finding the very ground of Maori incapacity for learning English correctly, and the most appropriate ways of overcoming it. The results of the examination were really pleasing. Two girls passed Standard IV., three passed Standard 111., three passed Standard 11., four passed Standard I.— twelve in all. There were four failures. The work of the "preparatories" was only moderately strong. The Mission School, Otaki, West Coast (examined 14th December, 1898). —The order is very much better than it was formerly, but the pupils seem to require frequent reminders as to their duties, positive and negative. The year had been an eventful and troublesome one. Work was begun with the Natives in good heart, and evidently more willing to assist the teacher than they used to be. Early in the year, however, Major Kemp died; there was an enormous tangi, and this, with a terrible accident in the teacher's family, and much illness in the settlement, disarranged the school work for the rest of the year. The Otaki Native school does useful work in preparing Maori children for the Board school on the one hand and for Te Aute on the other. Two pupils passed Standard IV., one passed Standard 111., three passed Standard 11., and six passed Standard I.—twelve in all. There were two failures; the "preparatories" gained but few marks. The Mission School, Putiki, Whanganui Biver (examined 18th November, 1898). —There has been great improvement in the order; total suppression of " whispering" is now quite within the range of possibility ; but the girls are much better than the boys. The school tone appears to have improved pari passu with the order. The children are all properly dressed; there is no dirtylooking child in the school. The extra subjects are pretty well-taught, and the quality of the work is improving. Drawing is the weakest of the three. On the whole, there has been decided improvement ; we may hope that this will be continuous and progressive ; that the teacher will, during the coming year, try to make good the places that are still undeniably weak. I make out that, on the whole, the written work has been greatly strengthened, while the vivd voce work remains more as it was last year. All the children presented (seventeen) passed—four in Standard IV., five in Standard 11., and eight in Standard I. It must not be supposed that all who passed did equally well. The Te Makarini Scholarships Examination, 1898. —Nineteen candidates put in an appearance at the examination rooms, of which there were ten in all—viz., at Te Aute College, Waerenga-a-Hika, Waiomatatini, Omaio, Auckland, Parapara, Bawene, Otaki, Kaitara, and Kaiapoi. For the senior scholarship, Ernest Sherburd, of Te Aute, gained the highest number of marks—72o, Next came Hori Kerei, also of Te Aute, with 710. Sherburd, of course, took the scholarship, but the trustees awarded a second senior scholarship to the latter. The battle for this scholarship was very well fought; between the number of marks gained by the successful candidate and the number gained by the candidate at the bottom of the list there was a difference of only 12 per cent. The Native Village School Junior Scholarship was awarded to Te Mauri Mauheni, of Bangitukia, who headed the list of junior candidates—with a percentage of 66-6. The open junior scholarship went to the second on the list—Edward Porter Uruamo, of Woodhill Public School, Kaipara, whose percentage was 62-7. Both of these were good candidates. The next three candidates were William Allison, of Baukokore, Karaitiana Poi, of Tikitiki, and William Parker Turei, of Bangitukia, in the order in which they are named. Of the remaining eight candidates, only three gained less than 50 per cent. No doubt the adoption of a somewhat lower standard of difficulty for the junior candidates has made this year's examination more successful than usual, and there is good reason for giving the plan a further trial. Statistics. A statement of expenditure incurred in connection with Native schools may be found in Tables Nos. I. and 11. of the appendix, Table No. 11. being a classified summary of Table No. 1., which gives full details. Table No. 111. states the ages of the children whose names were on the Native school registers at the end of the December quarter. Table No. IV. contains statistics of the attendance during the year 1898. In Table No. V. there is given as full information as the Department could obtain respecting the race of children attending Native schools. Table No. VI. specifies the results obtained at the standard examinations held during the year. In Table No. VII. the examination results are combined with those of a valuation depending on estimates made from inspection. These kinds of results taken together form a basis for the computation of what is called " the gross percentage," and on this percentage the relative positions of the individual schools for the year 1898 are made to depend. Table No. VIII. gives the classification of pupils on the school rolls in December, 1898. Table No. IX. shows the average age of pupils at the time of