8.—2

16

of buildings, fencing, furniture, &c, we have a net expenditure of £15,375 7s. lOd. on Native village schools, as against £15,764 Os. Bd. for the previous year. Dividing this by the working average attendance, 2,500-75, we obtain £6 3s. as the cost per head per annum of average attendance. Table 111. gives the ages of pupils on the books of the Native village schools as at the 31st December, 1900. The numbers differ but little from those of the previous year. There is evidence of a tendency towards decrease in the percentages of children over and under the age limits (5-15) for public-school scholars. Table IV. informs us that in 1900 the average weekly number on the roll was one more than it was in 1899; that there was an increase of 19 in the strict average attendance for the whole year, but a decrease of 36 in the working average, and that in the last quarter of 1900 the ratio of the boys to the girls was nearly the same as it was during the same period of 1899. It appears that, generally, the number of boys attending is greater than the number of girls, although there are many exceptions. This fact is probably partly an exemplification of the empirical law that in a declining, stationary, or only slightly increasing population more boys than girls are born, but partly it depends on the wide-reaching Maori belief that it is much more important that boys should be educated than that girls should. Table V. allows us to see that the percentage of scholars who are either European, or predominantly European, is nearly 1 per cent, greater than it was last year, and that the percentage of half-castes is about 1 per cent. less. The percentage of Maori and predominantly Maori children has hardly changed. Table VI. makes the total number of passes gained at Maori village schools for last year 1,222, as against 1,185 in 1899. It may be stated, also, that the number of " preparatories " showing signs of having been carefully and effectively taught has increased very much, and the greatest amount of improvement has been noticed, as a rule, in schools where kindergarten work has been attempted. It is hoped, and, indeed, confidently expected, that the introduction of hand-work for the junior classes will almost do away with the dulness and misery too often experienced by our younger pupils in small village schools, and will, besides, by brightening up the children generally, increase their interest in what has hitherto been their ordinary work. Indeed, it seems likely that this kind of improvement will be experienced in all the classes, and that, consequently, a striking effect of manual training will be that pupils will be able to do more and better work of every kind in less time than it has been wont' to take. Table VII. is an exceedingly useful one ; it shows whether a school may on the whole be justly called excellent, good, very fair, fair, pretty fair, indifferent, or very poor. It is, however, by no means a rule that the teacher of a school low down on the list is an indifferent or a very poor teacher. It is not unfrequently the case that untoward circumstances, such as famine, epidemic disease, or even troubles in connection with land, will bring a really good teacher's school painfully near the bottom of the list; still, however, the "low-down " school is a poor school for the time being. Table VIII. : The minor Tables, VIII. and IX., are beginning to be interesting. No. VIII. shows that the increase of numbers in the highest standards is relatively much greater than it is in the. lowest standards, when the attendance of 1900 is compared with that of 1895. This, of course, indicates that the work has an upward tendency. Table IX. : This shows the average age of pupils at standard examinations of schools in 1900. There has been on the whole but little change— e.g., the average age of passing Standard I. is now nine years nine months; in 1895 it was nine years eight months. Table X. : From this we find that there were seventy-four Government pupils in the boardingschools in 1900, as against seventy-seven in 1895. The number of private pupils at these institutions during the year was 151. Four boys were holding industrial scholarships at the end of 1900—viz., two saddlers, one coachbuilder, and one printer. One girl held a nursing scholarship at Napier Hospital. There was one scholar at the School of Engineering, Canterbury College. Also, two medical students were attending the Otago University. The most interesting statistics that have come to hand, however, have been collected by the Registrar-General's Department.. We learn from the census returns for 1901 that the Maori population is 42,851, against 39,623 in 1896. There is not the slightest reason to doubt that the quiet unostentatious labours of the teachers belonging to the Native schools staff have had no small share in the work of placing the Maori race on the upward grade once more. The New Outlook. There can be little doubt that strong effort will be put forth to render our educational work wider and deeper than it has been, but without causing extra strain on those engaged in that work. Maori schools, like other educational institutions, are feeling the newer impulse very strongly. In them, too, hand and eye on the one side and controlling mind on the other are both henceforth to get their due, and are to find their truest and, in many respects, their highest utility in their effects on each other; a closer and more rational alliance between thought and what is thought about is to be sought for; words are not to be mere symbols prettily linked together, perhaps, but only half or quarter understood. In real earnest, our children are to leave off learning mere words and sentences, the true meaning of which, it may perhaps be hoped, they will arrive at by and-by—if they are lucky. Rather, the future course is to be something like this : Our scholars are, with aid of hand and eye, to secure such familiarity with quantity, quality, and relation in connection with sensible reality, as forms, and must form, the basis of all knowledge, and of all education too, so far as the acquisition of knowledge is part of education. Hand-and-eye work is, for instance, to afford objects on the one hand, and, on the other, the endeavour to understand and describe what is seen and done is to give our children their very best opportunities of learning the correct use of language with reference to what truly is and actually happens. Similarly, it is hoped, this hand-and-eye work will largely help us to lay a better and sounder basis for arithmetic and geometry than