B Boys. QUEENSLAND BOARD of GENERAL EDUCATION, for the Year ended 31st December, 1875—continued. AGGREGATE ATTENDANCE. Girls and Infants. Total. 41 108 108 404 1 5 ... 27 85 76 ... a This does not include sums expended on new schools not completed during the year, the total amount of which was £3,263 5s. ld. ANNUAL REPORT OF INSPECTION, 1875.-(J. G. ANDERSON, Esq., M.A.) SIR, Brisbane, 31st December, 1875. I have the honor to submit to you the following general report for the year 1875. The duties of Acting General Inspector confined me so closely to the office during the first part of the year that the systematic inspection of only ten schools in my district could be overtaken; but from the beginning of August to the end of the school year I was constantly employed in district inspection. Seventy-one schools were in operation in my district in the course of the year. Of these I inspected forty-seven, Mr. Inspector Ewart inspected twenty-two, and two were not inspected from want of time, namely, the school at Bulwer, Moreton Island, and the non-vested E. C. school in Queen street. The school at Boggy Creek alone was inspected more than once. The Church of England non-vested schools in Fortitude Valley, South Brisbane, and Spring Hill, and the non-vested school on Gregory Terrace were not re-opened in 1875; and the vested school near the village of Cleveland was closed towards the end of the year. Vested schools were opened at Boggy Creek, Bunya, Chinaman's Creek, Kelvin Grove, Leichhardt street, and West End, and provisional schools were established at Buderim Mountain and North Pine River. The schools in Leichhardt street and at West End each contain distinct departments, under independent management, for boys, for girls, and for infants. Extended accommodation was provided for the boys at Fortitude Valley, and for the girls and infants at Petrie Terrace, by the erection of new detached buildings. During the year school buildings at Coorpooroo and Nerang were completed, and at Belmont were contracted for. The new buildings which have been erected in Brisbane are constructed of brick; no two of them are of the same plan, a circumstance which may have arisen from the need of accommodating the buildings to the nature of the ground, and to the nature of the teaching requirements. They are uniformly defective in ventilation, and in this respect are more or less ill adapted to their use. The class-rooms provided for infants are also quite out of proportion to those provided for girls and for boys, and are very much too small; the infants' room at Leichhardt street should be at least three times as large. No existing school building in Brisbane affords a satisfactory model for general adoption, and a plan of school suitable for the instruction of a large number of children in the climate of Queensland is still a desideratum. If the work of inspection is to be carried out with the exactness desirable, it will be necessary to provide each large school with a classroom in which a class can be examined. The difficulty of testing the proficiency of a class in a large schoolroom in which half-a-dozen teachers are simultaneously at work often almost amounts to an impossibility. Even if the discipline prevents the children from talking, which it seldom does, the unavoidable hum of work and the too prevalent low tones or low keys in which the pupils speak make the answers inaudible to a greater or less extent. In ordinary circumstances this class-room would be of daily use in teaching, and would be invaluable for this purpose. Greater attention than hitherto should be given by the architect to a proper system of ventilation. I know of no plan which for effectiveness approaches the old plan of leaving an open space between the roof and the wall-plate, and I know not why it has been abandoned. Means of closing the apertures, if required, in winter should be provided. In wooden buildings, sliding panels near the floor should exist on all sides of the room. There have been fresh evidences of taste shown in the adornment of school grounds, by the cultivation of flowers and the planting of shade trees; the most conspicuous new example is the school at German Station. A roomy paddock of good light soil had lain in a state of nature, under a succession of teachers, for over ten years. Its present state is described in the appended abridged report of the school. The same school takes precedence of all others in the completeness of its gymnasium. The improvements in this case have been provided without a penny of outlay to the Department, and entirely by funds raised locally, or at the expense and labor of the teacher and his family. In such matters, as in all other matters that distinguish a good school from a bad one, the man is everything. The schools are fully supplied with furniture and apparatus; if anything was found wanting it was authorised by the Inspector. The leading want in all schools was a set of materials for object lessons. A supply was ordered from Britain in the beginning of the year, but the year had almost expired before it reached the hands of the teachers. Lavatories have become pretty general now. With very few exceptions, the schools have adequate staffs of teachers-that is to say, the number of pupils in average attendance rarely exceeds 30 to each teacher; it is also seldom less than 20. In all cases where the head teacher is a competent person the proportion is to be considered satisfactory, even though a moiety or more of the staff should be still in a state of pupilage. During the first half of the year the prevalence of measles, and of fever of an epidemic character, affected the attendance very seriously in nearly all schools, and especially in the city schools; but by the time the work of inspection was taken in hand systematically the daily attendance of pupils had nearly reached the normal average, and continued in the same proportion to the end of the year. The number of children on the school rolls on the days of inspection amounted to 6,609, and of these 751 per cent. were present. In 1874 the corresponding percentage was 766. Of the children enrolled, about 43 per cent. are in the first or lowest class, 30 per cent. in the second class, 18 per cent. in the third, 8 per cent. in the fourth, and 1 per cent. in the fifth. Thus 73 per cent. of all the children at school are in the first and second classes, or, in other words, are receiving only very elementary instruction. The cause of this is to be found not so much in a backwardness in proportion to the ages of the children, as in the fact that comparatively B |