SCHOOL VERSUS SCHOOL AT NAPIER.

New Zealand Tablet, Issue 43, 26 October 1899, Page 18

SCHOOL VERSUS SCHOOL AT NAPIER.

Huck Finn despised 'grub that came too easy,' and didn't 'give a darn for a thing 'thout it was tollable hard to git.' If the leaderwriter cf the Hawse's Bay Herald is similarly minded he must have been as happy as Mark Tapley when flinging together the lengthy and laboured article which appeared in its columns on October 10. He undertook %o explain — or, rather, to explain away — the fact that, while the State schools in the district show attendances diminished by 126, the Catholic schools have lately been receiving a steady influx of fresh recruits. That was his task, and 'labour dire it was and heavy woe' — so much so that he finds a world of comfort in a statement that a Catholic school some hundred miles away had sustained a loss of one pupil all told 1 A small mercy, indeed, to be so mightily thankful for I He Bets down at 10 the gain to the Napier Catholic schools at the expense of the local State schools. As a matter of fact the net gain has been 30. They were all recruited from the State schools, and the accessions took place since the recent examinations, when the Catholic schools scored 81 and 91 per cent, of passes as against 70 per cent, at the prinoipal local State school. The Herald leader-writer did not so

much as refer to the results of 1 the inspection ascontributing to the increase of the attendance at the local Catholic schools. But some Napierites, at least, know when they have got a good thing.