The State Normal Schools have been unusually prosperous during the past year; the average attendance in them has been considerably increased, and the demand upon them for trained teachers for the Public Schools has been greater than could be supplied. It is not pretended that all the graduates make successful teachers, but it is certain that their chances of success are greatly increased by the normal training they receive. The people in every part of the State appreciate more and more the advantages of employing these trained teachers. They are eagerly sought for in other States, where they command much larger salaries than are paid in Massachusetts, and some of our best teachers are thus induced to leave the State after their required term of service is completed here. It is safe to say they are generally successful. The Normal Schools afford the Commonwealth a favorable opportunity to discharge an agreeable duty to her enterprising daughters, with the certainty of receiving back in their faithful services the most liberal compensation.

The average expense to the State of each pupil during the year has been less than fifty dollars. This includes the entire cost of care of buildings, of instruction and school-books. The

English course of instruction in these schools is quite equal to that in many of our colleges, and far better than has been afforded to females in our private academies. During the past year nineteen males have been admitted to the schools, and eight have graduated. The number of females admitted during the same time is two hundred and forty-one--the number of graduates one hundred and ninety-six. They are now crowded with pupils, and the number of applicants in some of the schools is greater than can be accommodated. The increase of pupils of all ages in the Public Schools during the year has been about five thousand, and the increase in the average attendance nearly six thousand. Two hundred and thirty-one additional teachers have been employed during the year. Of this number, two hundred and seventeen were females, and fourteen were males. The inquiry naturally arises, how shall this increasing demand for trained teachers be supplied? The answer can be given without hesitation or delay. It costs the Commonwealth about two hundred dollars annually to support each person in her reformatory institutions. It costs less than fifty to prepare a well trained teacher for her Public Schools, the great antidote for crimes and pauperism.

The State must enlarge the schools she now has, or establish new ones in favorable localities. The industrial productions of the great county of Worcester during the year 1865 were more than seventy-six millions of dollars. She has a population of one hundred and sixty-two thousand nine hundred and twenty-three. The county contains seven hundred and seventy-two Public Schools, in which were employed during last year more than one thousand teachers, and in which there were during the summer thirty-one thousand four hundred and forty-four different pupils. There were returned in the whole county but two thousand four hundred and fifty-three children, between the ages of five and fifteen years, that did not attend the Public Schools a portion of the year. So much have the Public Schools advanced within a few years, that this portion of the State, formerly so distinguished for its Academies and Private Schools, has returned but five incorporated, and but seventy-four unincorporated Academies and Private Schools in the whole county, in which there was an average attendance last year of only two thousand two hundred and twelve pupils. So that it appears that out of the thirty-three thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven children in Worcester

County, between the ages of five and fifteen years, nearly all are accounted for as being in attendance a part of the year, either in her Public or Private Schools. Doubtless other counties might show as good a record.

The Commonwealth is not doing too much for education, nor is the public interest in the Public Schools so great as the private zeal of her people. Our State legislatures, notwithstanding our excellent laws, are not so devoted or so faithful in providing the means of public instruction as are the towns and the people in the use of them. It is not perhaps desirable to increase the school fund, so as to relieve the towns of the chief burden of education. The privileges of the Public Schools will be more appreciated if the people contribute annually to their support. This is evident from the large amounts raised annually in the State, and also from the extraordinary increase of appropriations in nearly all the towns during the past few years. Almost two millions of dollars were raised and appropriated last year for public instruction, and the increase of appropriations for the last two years has been about one-quarter of that sum.

The support of the Normal Schools has been derived from the income of the school fund, devoted by law to that purpose. The amount of that fund is now limited to two millions of dollars, and can only be increased each year, as things now are, by the amount of the surplus of receipts over expenditures. It cannot be reasonably expected by the most economical management that any large additions can be realized in the present state of prices, with the constantly increasing demands upon this portion of the fund. The two hundred and fifty thousand children in our beloved Commonwealth would never understand the wisdom of denying to them the necessary advantages of education, in order to increase a public fund by the accumulation of simple interest for the benefit of future generations. The salaries of teachers in the Normal Schools are now less than is paid in many of our Public Schools, and all the expenses are as much reduced as the public interest will justify. It will therefore be seen that the enlargement of the present schools, or the establishment of new schools to meet the public exigency, must be made out of appropriations from the treasury.

The present condition of the Normal Schools will appear from the following table:

Statistics showing the condition of the State Normal Schools.

During the past year the Board of Education has placed one of the State Normal Schools under the charge of a female. Thus far the experiment has been eminently successful.

There are now seven thousand five hundred and ninety-eight teachers regularly employed in the Public Schools in the Commonwealth, and of these one thousand and eighty-six (1,086) are males, and six thousand five hundred and twelve, (6,512) are females.

Total.