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accommodation is, already available. It is anticipated that intermediate schools, where they exist, will take much of the strain arising from the retention of the fourteen-year-olds, but secondary and technical schools will also be affected. Not the least of the problems to be faced will be the devising of courses of study fitted to the needs and interests of the non-academic type of fourteen-year-old. Kindergartens and Nursery Schools. —The very existence of some kindergartens was being threatened by shortage of staff, and so regulations were amended to provide for annual allowances of £50 (plus £25 boarding-allowance, where necessary) to be paid to kindergarten trainees. In 1942, thirty-eight trainees were working under this scheme, and the future supply of teachers seems well assured. An additional grant was also made to the free kindergartens to enable them to raise the salaries of their staffs. Financial provision has been made for certain Wellington free kindergartens to open in 1943 as all-day nursery schools to care for the pre-school children of mothers engaged in work of national importance. If these are successful, it is proposed to extend the scheme to other centres where the need is shown to exist. At the end of the year there were 2,008 pupils on the rolls of 44 free kindergartens. Primary School Curriculum. —I have given instructions that the whole primary curriculum be brought under review section by section. To this end I set up during the year an Arithmetic Syllabus Revision Committee consisting of departmental officers and representatives of the teachers' organizations. This Committee has now reported, and their suggested syllabus is being considered by the New Zealand Educational Institute. The report will have an important influence on arithmeticteaching throughout the school. I propose early in 1943 to set up a Committee on Health Education. School Library Service. —The School Library Service started during the year has already proved itself a most popular and successful venture. By the end of the year 402 schools and 22,462 children were being served with the finest children's books available. There is a long waiting-list, and the expansion of the service is limited only by the difficulty of securing books overseas. It is hoped eventually to cover all schools, but the needs of the country schools are greatest and must be met first. The success of the scheme has been due to the excellent work of the Country Library Service, which instituted and administers it. Teaching Aids, Art, and Handwork. —Because of its wider scope and enriched curriculum, the modern school needs far more equipment than ever before, just as the modern teacher needs knowledge and skills of which his more formal predecessor might well be innocent. In spite of difficulties arising from the war, considerable advances have already been made in providing schools with necessary equipment and specialist services. With the co-operation of the High Commissioner for Great Britain and of the Miramar Film Studios, a National Film Library has been started which gives to the schools (as well as to other organizations) a free and growing service of films, both sound and silent. The Department has established free libraries of film-strips in every Education Board district, and is regularly adding to them film-strips prepared in New Zealand. The whole system of school broadcasting was reorganized during the year with the assistance of the National Broadcasting Service ; it now provides a country-wide coverage of specially prepared school broadcasts for three hours and a quarter a week. An Acting-Supervisor of Art and Handwork has been appointed to the Department, and a scheme of handwork has been devised that will use to the full New Zealand supplies of raw materials. In particular, textile crafts —spinning, dyeing, knitting, and weaving—have proved popular, and arrangements have been made for the Otago Education Board to manufacture in its own workshops supplies of looms and spinning-wheels, which are sold to the schools at well below cost price. In 1943 a small number of specialist teachers of art and handwork mil be appointed as additional assistants to certain schools to work out the new scheme and to help to train teachers in it. It is hoped to extend the use of special instructors in art and handwork as soon as the staffing position improves. One of the greatest needs of the schools is increased teaching equipment, and I propose in 1943 to seek the co-operation of other Boards in the making of equipment for handwork, physical education, and infant rooms for distribution to the schools. It is also proposed to alter the regulations to permit School Committees to spend part of their grants for incidentals on such equipment, which must bo regarded as more than a luxury in the modern school. Physical Education. —The new system of physical education is now becoming well established in the primary and is increasingly spreading to the post-primary schools. During the year the number of area organizers was increased from four to sixteen. Counting additional assistants, there are now forty men and women engaged full time on physical education in the primary-school system. Many of the teachers specially trained in this work in recent years are being used by the armed Services in their physical and remedial work. Post-primary Schools.—A new problem was introduced into the secondary schools by the call-up of some senior boys for home defence : every effort was made to see that there should be as little interference as possible with the studies and careers of these pupils. In the technical schools a disturbing feature is the growing tendency of pupils to be attracted into industry before completing their courses. This is particularly the case in the night classes, in the enrolment for which there has been a drop of as much as 50 per cent, in certain schools. The chief causes seem to be the withdrawal of men for the armed forces, overtime, difficulties of transport, and the reluctance of women and girls to attend evening school under restricted lighting conditions. The raising of the school age will help to keep pupils at day school, but the drop in night-school enrolments is in large part due to factors over which educational authorities have little control. One pleasing factor in this year's statistics is that a record figure of 69 per cent, of children leaving primary schools began full-time post-primary courses. There were 14,568 enrolments in 1942, as against 13,230 in 1941. Native Schools. —Staffing problems have been particularly acute in the Native schools, although it is pleasing to be able to report that the number of Maoris qualifying for teacher's certificates is growing rapidly. There are in the Native Schools Service eighteen fully certificated Maori teachers, of whom all but three have qualified within the past few years. In 1943 there will be in the training colleges sixteen first-year and eighteen second-year Maori students. Twenty-three Maori girls have completed nursing scholarships, of whom twenty have begun or completed hospital training. Ten

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