E.—6

4

one year spent at a secondary school, where a new course of work is being entered upon,Sjis practically useless, and represents little more than a waste of time and money. A still higher proportion, 37-7 per cent., remain only one year in the secondary departments of district high schools, but as the course of work taken there is often more in the nature of a coping-stone to the primary course the matter is not quite so serious. The case of technical high schools, where 29-5 per cent, of the pupils leave at the end of the first year, calls for serious consideration. The whole matter is dominated by the age at which pupils begin their secondary course, which in New Zealand averages fourteen years, and is considered to be two years too old. Post-primary Education. An experiment is at present being carried out with a view to finding a remedy for the unsatisfactory condition mentioned in the previous paragraph. A junior high school has been established in Auckland which children enter after passing S4 and at which they may remain for four years. The regulations provide for threefifths of the course of work entered upon to be common to all the pupils and to include such subjects as English, arithmetic, geography, history and civics, general science, and drawing and practical geometry, the remaining two-fifths having an academic commercial, industrial (including domestic), agricultural, or art bias, according to the special aptitude of the individual. Over six hundred pupils are attending this junior high school, and, although it is too early to report definitely upon the success of the scheme, reports to hand go to prove that the experiment will be a successful one. When the system is extended, 'junior high schools will probably in some cases be attached to primary schools and in others to secondary schools. In the meantime, wide inquiries are being made as to the success of the various adaptations of the junior high school in other countries.