The Pownal (City) School has been reopened in a room on Sydney Street. It seems hard that the teaCher of this school should be obliged to provide the desks, seats, maps and blackboards at his own expense.

The very low ebb to which the common Schools of Charlottetown have fallen ought to be cause of alarm to all who take any interest ‘whatever in the future well—being of this, the Capital of one of the Provinces of the great Dominion of Canada. That alarm must surely be increased to every considerate mind when it is known that an army of about 800 children, of school age, within the limits of the City, or about one in three, never enter a Schoolroom at all. The twelve .or thirteen poor Schoolrooms now in use with difficulty accomodate the 630 children enrolled; but if the 800 children who do not go to School at all. could be induced to make their appearance, about sixteen additional Schoolrooms would be required. These facts speak for themselves." '

A year later Mr. McPhail urges that City schools destitute of properaeconmodations be closed, feeling such action would arouse all

F concerned to a sense of their duty. Apparently this had been done in

some rural arease

At the same time Mr. McPhail emphasizes that he does not hold the teachers responsible for the low state of the City schools in respect to attainments and progress in school work, the primary cause being found in the system, or rather the absence of all system which

Vcharacterized the organization and administration of the City schools. He continues:

”As a body, the City Teachers are striving to the utmost of their power to keep up the respectability and efficiency of their schools, but all in vain."

In the same Report Mr. McPhail says:

"Many of the pupils are never long at one school, but keep running about from school to school. As one teacher said, ‘They just keep racing

and chasing each other from one school to another. I am sorry when they come to me for they do harm to my school, end I am sorry when

they leave me for they do harm to themselves.‘

At the Temperance Hall I found pupils who had been attending -t six di;ferent schools during the past six months..... At Scott's H"11, on the day of my visit, there were 94 pupils in attendance, of whom

58 had attended at nine different schools during the past six months.