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The prescribed course of instruction for the pupils provides for: --

I Instruction in the elements of reading, writing and arithmetic.
II Singing and recitation.
III Object lessons.
IV Drawing.
V Needlework for girls.
VI Physical exercises.
VII Manual instruction, not less than six hours weekly to each child. For the older girls practical housewifery, needlework, machine sewing, cooking and laundry work are the forms most in use. No class for this manual training may have more than eight pupils.

FORMS OF MANUAL INSTRUCTION

(a) Suitable for younger children:
Paper mat-making.
Clay-modeling.
Macrame-work and various other forms of string work.
Pricking, coloring, and kindergarten sewing.
Basket-making.
Paper-folding.
Bead-threading.
Paper-cutting and mounting.
Building with cubes.
Worsted-work.
Needlework.

(b) Suitable for older boys:
Wood-work of various kinds.
Shoe-making.
Basket-making.
Modeling in pasteboard (the German pappé work).
Chair-caning.
Mat-making.
Tailoring.
Gardening and Farm-work.

(c) Suitable for older girls:
Cookery.
Laundry-work.
Practical housewifery.
Needlework.

N. B. -- Out of the minimum six hours per week of manual instruction not more than two hours may be devoted to needlework.

The number in average attendance in the special class must not exceed twenty for each class, except if there are more than two classes in a "centre" there may be an average attendance of thirty in each class after the first two.

The hours during which a special class is opened must not exceed two and one half in the morning and two in the afternoon. An interval of at least an hour and a half must be interposed between morning and afternoon sessions.

Boys and girls under fourteen are taught in the same classes. No pupil under seven is received. Pupils may be kept in these classes until sixteen years of age.

Corporal punishment is used "when necessary."

Pupils who live at a distance from the "centre" are often provided with a conveyance or "guide" to and from school at the expense of the school funds. A large majority of the children are able to go to school unattended, but several accidents, one of which was fatal, are recorded as having happened to the children on the way to or from class. Certain pupils not otherwise provided for are "boarded out" near the special classes at public expense.

Parents who are able are expected to pay a certain sum for the special instruction of their children.

In some of the poorer districts the children are provided with a substantial midday meal or a glass of milk midway of the morning session.

The act of 1899 makes provision for the institutional care and training at public expense of certain feeble-minded children not otherwise provided for, in certain "certified" schools, similar to the training homes for feeble. minded girls associated with the Society for Promotion of the Welfare of the Feeble-Minded. I believe there are no training homes of a similar character for feeble-minded boys.

In this connection the following quotation from the 1898 Report is of interest: --

"Generally speaking we do not consider that large institutions are the best form of provision for the education of feeble-minded children. Dr. Walmsley in his evidence has referred to some of the improved cases in Darenth and to the disadvantages of retaining them in such a place; and these disadvantages apply only in less degree to the system of retaining feeble-minded children in institutions by themselves. Mr. Colvill has well expressed the disadvantages of institution life when applied to children who will have to try to earn a living in the country. Defective children in the country are better fitted for their future by living at home in family life, and seeing all the sides of rural life and labour among their own people than by being drafted away to an institution necessarily very different in its arrangement from the ordinary rural home. In the institution all the manual work is of a more specialized type and under constant supervision, and the child is returned after a few years to things which have become unfamiliar and to people who have ceased to be his friends."

"Moreover, when once school authorities begin to set up institutions for feeble-minded children, there is a risk that the line of discrimination may be drawn too low, in other words, that they may send to such institutions children who are not merely feeble-minded but imbecile, and may thus under-take work which lies outside their province, and may interfere with provisions made for imbecile children by other means. There are, however, cases of children admissible to the special classes as feeble-minded for whom an institution may be for a time preferable by reason of bad general health, or unsatisfactory home surroundings: or, again, by reason of some disabling physical defects, which prevent a child from attending day classes."

In the schools I visited the school-rooms were well lighted and ventilated and decidedly cheery and attractive. There seemed to be a good supply of appropriate school material for object teaching, manual training, apparatus for special sense training, pictures and picture books, etc.