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to holders o scholarships and free places in secondary schools, district high schools, and technical schools ; and at the beginning of 1909 the same concession was granted to other secondary pupils who were compelled to travel by rail in order to attend school. The amount paid on this account for railway fares in the years 1909 and 1910 was as follows :— 1909. 1910. . £ £ Primary pupils .. .. .. .. .. 5,769 4,961 Pupils attending— (a.) Secondary schools .. .. .. .. 2,199 2,323 (b.) District high schools.. .. .. .. 1.368 1,354 (c.) Technical schools .. .. .. .. 3,850 3,798 £13,186 £12,436 Conveyance by Road and Water. —ln cases where children live at a considerable distance from any school, grants are made to Education Boards under section 44 of the Act for their conveyance to school. No payment is made in the case of children under ten unless they live more than three miles away from the school by the nearest road, and in the case of children over ten unless they live more than four miles away. Rid ng-horses and bicycles are excluded from the means of conveyance on account of which the allowance is made. The amount allowed is 6d. for each return trip—that is, the conveyance of one child to and from school on one day. The Taranaki, Grey, and Westland Boards did not arrange for conveyance. In the North Canterbury, South Canterbury, Otago, and Southland districts, this plan for conveyance of children was very much more widely adopted than in any of the more northern districts. The total amount paid in 1910 to ten Education Boards for conveyance by road and water amounted to £3,322, as against £2,755 in 1909. The total amount paid for conveyance of pupils in 1910 was therefore £15,758, as against £15,941 for 1909. Board of School-children. —ln some cases it happens that, through local conditions such as, for instance, the absence of roads or the distance from the nearest school, it is found impossible to convey children to and from school daily. In such cases an allowance of 2s. 6d. per week is made, on the approval of the Minister, in aid of the board of any child who has to live away from home in order to attend a public school. In 1910, £269 was paid for the board of school-children, as against £138 in 1909. Free School-books. The system of supplying free school-books has now been in operation for three years, the preparatory classes and Standards I and II being supplied during 1909, Standard 111 during 1910, and last session a sum was included in the vote for elementary education to defray the cost of books to be supplied to Standard IV during the current year. The payment to Boards for pupils in Standard IV was fixed at ss. 3d. per pupil on the roll of Standard IV for the year ending 31st December, 1911. This sum is considered ample to provide miscellaneous (or non-continuous) readers, supplementary (or continuous) readers, arithmetic books, atlases, or geographical readers, and historical readers. These books having i>een supplied, the balance of the grant, if any, may be spent either in the purchase of some of the books for Standard V, or in the purchase of approved books for class-libraries suitable for the home reading of children in Standard IV. The " School Journal " and other Publications, Charts, &c. The School Journal has now completed its fourth year of issue, the first number being published in May, 1907. It is published in three parts—viz., Part I (sixteen pages) for Classes I and II; Part II (sixteen pages) for Classes 111 and IV; and Part 111 (thirty-two pages) for Classes V and VI. There are no issues for the months of December and January, but the November number is enlarged to provide readingmatter until the schools close, about the middle of December. Public schools, Native schools, special schools (such as industrial schools), and certain other institutions more or less under departmental control or supervision are supplied free with