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(10) Increasing difficulty has been found in selecting students for special bursaries sat the University. It became necessary to institute a special examination for this purpose in 1946. (11) A Board of Moderators, consisting of representatives of secondary and technical schools and of the Department, was set up to ensure that the papers set for the School Certificate Examination are of a satisfactory standard and fairly test the work done in the schools under the new prescriptions. (12) A training scheme for teachers of woodwork and metalwork, the first of its kind in New Zealand, was instituted at the Auckland Technical School. (13) During the year Parliament passed the Apprenticeship Amendment Act, which was based on the report of the Commission on Apprenticeship. This report made five recommendations dealing with education. They concerned careers work in schools, technical bursaries, the revision of the Technological Examinations, technical correspondence courses, and the salaries of technical teachers. It is gratifying to be able to report that action has been taken, as indicated above, in connection with every one of these recommendations. (14) Important steps were taken during the year towards the unifying of the secondary and the technical school systems. On the resignation of Mr. F. C. Renyard from the position of Superintendent of Technical Education, Mr. E. Caradus was appointed Chief Inspector of Post-primary Schools and placed in charge of the combined branches. At the same time the secondary and technical inspectorates were strengthened numerically -and amalgamated. When the time comes for the larger technical colleges to drop their junior work and develop as senior technical institutions it is probable that the position of Superintendent of Technical Education will be revived. As a further measure of unification, the grants to secondary and technical schools for incidental expenses were for the first time made on the same basis. The secondary departments of district high .schools, moreover, were brought within the post-primary field proper for the purposes of staffing, salaries, and grading of teachers. (15) Two district high schools were changed during the year into full post-primary schools—Matamata College and Tauranga College. Whangarei High School was split into separate boys' and girls' schools. The buildings at Kaikohe, originally erected as a military hospital, were converted for school and hostel purposes and will open in 1947 as a technical and agricultural high school to cater for both Maoris and pakehas in Northland. Primary Schools It is not generally recognized that the classes of the primary school, like the lower forms of the secondary school, are constituted very differently now from what they were .a generation ago. The following figures give, for example, the children in Standards 3, 4, 5, and 6 in 1916 and 1946 respectively, expressed as percentages of the total school rolls :

These figures would have to be corrected, of course, to allow for varying birth-rates •over the four-year periods, but they are accurate enough to show that very many children now reach Form II who thirty years ago would have finished with schooling entirely in Standard 4or Form I. This may be in part due to improved teaching methods, but it

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Year. Percentage of Children in— Standard 3. Standard 4. Form I. Form II. 1916 1946 11-9 11-4 10-9 10-8 9-3 10-7 61 9-7