1925-1926-1927 - Department of Education and Skills

43The libraries have not children's departments, but they containbooks suitable for children.ATTENDANCE.In the last 10 years the population has fallen in the remoter andpoorer areas, and in consequence the enrolment is down; but asregards attendance the parents, generally speaking, sent thechildren to school with reasonable regularity, even before theAttendance Act came into force. The attendance was improvinggradually after the years of disturbance, and the Attendance Acthas emphasised this improvement and sent the average up slightlyduring the last school year.'With more regular attendance we must look for more rapidpromotion from standard to standard, so that there may be aubstantial improvement in the child's acquirement at the age of14.The health of the pupils is good except for epidemics whichoccur during winter and spring in the big towns and in the poorerparts of the division.Our teachers are rated aSIfollows:-Highly efficient. about 29%; efficient, about 5 %;about 13%.non-efficient,Thus we have a very good percentage of highly-skilled teachersand a high percentage of our teachers do their work efficiently.With regard to the 13% of non-efficient teachers it should benoted that a number of them are young teachers on probationwho have not yet found their feet; and another number are whatwould formerly have been called" fair." The work of the latter,while not good or deserving of increment of salary, is not bad orinefficient.The inspectors are agreed that most of the teachers makeefforts to improve themselves in Irish by private study, etc., butthat apart from that there is not much evidence that the bulk ofthem read or study much or make serious efforts to keep themselvesin touch with modern educational developments. I mustsay, though, that I have found a large number of teachers interestedin local history, and this is a valuable subject, for, besidesbeing interesting to the pupils, it is the backbone of the nationalhistory. But the majority have not done much at this subject,largely because hooks are not at hand; and because the teachersare not trained to use the available materials, archreological, etc.Efforts are being made to interest the teachers in the collectionof folk-lore, but not much has been done yet. Folk-lore has alimited use in the school. It is de irable that the languages (Irishespecially) should be taught largely through indigenous folkmatter, stories, rhymes. songs, riddles, pro erbs, etc. This, however,is not commonly done.