IV. List of Principals and Assistants of Collegiate Institutes and High Schools, January, 1907.-Continued.

APPENDIX V.-REPORT OF THE INSPECTOR OF CONTINUATION CLASSES.

HONOURABLE R. A. PYNE, M.D., LL.D.,

Minister of Education, for the Province of Ontario,

Education Department, Toronto, Ontario.

HONOURABLE SIR,-I have the honour to submit herewith my report on the Continuation Classes of the Province of Ontario for the year ending December 31st, 1906.

The appended table of statistics will be found to contain considerable information in reference to the Grade A and Grade B classes not hitherto published.

I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your obedient servant,

April 18th, 1907.

R. H. COWLEY.

CONTINUATION CLASSES.

Continuation classes were established in the Province of Ontario in 1896. in response to a persistent demand for a more extended course of studies in the rural schools. Though this demand was sometimes voiced as a complaint against what was termed the inferior education afforded by the public school, it may fairly be considered in some sense a tribute to the efficacy of both public and high schools. Despite its limitations the pubile school had at least succeeded in creating some general stimulus toward a higher education than it had thus far afforded. The high school, too, had steadily widened its influence until it had come to be accepted as a satisfactory instrument of secondary education. Since 1867 the number of high schools, then weakly attended and more weakly equipped, had increased from 103 to 130 in 1896, while the roll of pupils had increased between four and five hundred per cent. Every one of these high schools, scattered over the entire province, had been a mission-house of better education; every one of the 25,000 pupils then in attendance had been in some degree a witness to the advantage of such education. Also the large army of 16,000 candidates that had been coming up yearly from the elementary schools to the Entrance Examination constituted in itself fairly conclusive evidence that the apirations of the average man were steadily setting toward a better education for his chidren than that hitherto afforded by the public school.

At this point it is perhaps worth noting that, while the extension of the Entrance Examination helped to awaken public interest in the high schools, one of its first effects on the rural schools was to insinuate the idea that this examination was their proper finishing point. This soon resulted in the depletion of the Fifth classes and the consequent lowering of the rural school standard. Though some far-seeing inspectors persistently encouraged Fifth classes, the attendance in these classes gradually diminished from 17 per cent. of the total enrolment in 1867 to 2 per cent. of the enrolment in 1887.

The Public School Leaving Examination.

With the introduction of the Public School Leaving Examination in 1892 the Fifth classes began to grow until in 1897 the percentage of attendance was more than double that of 1887. The number of candidates that passed this examination during the course of its existence, from 1892 to 1899 inclusive, was in the order of years as follows:-195, 268, 690, 1,395, 1,826, 2.242, 1.980, 2,825. During these years the attendance in the Fifth classes increased in round numbers from 13,000 to 20,000, though in the same time. the total attendance in all the classes of the elementary schools fell from 485,000 to 471,000. Upon the abolition of the Public School Leaving Examination in 1899 a decrease in the number of Fifth class pupils became apparrent, but the percentage of attendance in these classes has not fallen so low as the standard of 1892, owing evidently to the influence of the Continuation Classes which had lately been organized and had in all probability received their first vital impulse from the Public School Leaving Examination.

Waiving the question of the ultimate place that examinations should occupy in an efficient system of public education, the outstanding facts in connection with the High School Entrance Examination, the Public School Leaving Examination and the extension of Continuation Classes seem to suggest very definitely that a formal public test and a formal public recognition of knowledge attained are a material inducement toward prolonged attendance and better education.

The Typical Continuation Class.

The four grades into which Continuation Classes are at present classified represent materially different standards of efficiency. Those known as grades C and D are not as a rule different from the ordinary rural Fifth class except in having a slightly larger attendance. Grade B is distinguished by its larger attendance and by conditions of classification which enable the teacher to devote more of his time to this class than is the case in the average grade Cor D. But like these lower grades it is seldom able to carry the pupils beyond the limit of the Lower School course of the high school, and this limit is now recognized by the regulations as the legitimate field of any public school Fifth class. There is, however, another feature of the grade B class which more conspicuously differentiates it from the lower grades. It is not so much a merely local Fifth class. It affords some measure of education to surrounding sections. In 1906 the 51 grade B classes had a roll of 1,232 pupils of whom 983 were resident and 249, or more than one fifth the whole attendance, non-resident. In other words these 51 grade B classes were attended by pupils from 181 school sections, each class serving on the average more than three and a half sections.

The grade A class is the highest and may therefore be taken as the type or objective of the system. Its characteristic features are: (1) a properly qualified teacher; (2) the teacher's whole time devoted to the class; (3) the class consisting entirely of pupils who have passed the Entrance examination or its equivalent; (4) the programme of studies including the work of the Middle School of the high school course; (5) the pupils coming from a number of surrounding sections.

It will readily be seen that the very pith of these characteristics is the fact that the teacher devotes his whole time to the class. Insist upon this and the other essentials are likely to follow in due course in the majority of cases, though these are worth facilitating by special regulations.

Steady Growth of Grade A Classes.

How far the present grade A classes meet these conditions a glance at the facts will reveal. In the first place their comparatively steady growth marks them as the apparent goal of the lower grades. The grades C and D depend largely upon the numbers in their respective localities that pass the Entrance examination from year to year, and this means that they are in a more or less unstable condition. In 1900 there were in all 337 of these classes, rising to their maximum of 432 in 1902 and falling again to their minimum number of 300 in 1906. As for the grade B classes they seem to be chiefly a recruit