This thesis is concerned with the earliest years of education in the Canterbury Settlement, from the arrival of the First Four Ships in December 1850, to 1857: a year which is notable tor the passing of the first Education Ordinance of the Province, and the end of the first Superintendency. It is therefore concerned with the infancy of the New Zealand education system. Knowledge of the facts about education in early Canterbury is very inadequate. It is not known how many schools existed, when they opened or closed, who their teaohers were or how many pupils attended them. Knowledge of what school books were used, what fees charged, or what subjects taught is equally slight. For this reason detailed accounts of the origins and growth of schools will be given, and an attempt made to fill in some of these gaps in our knowledge of the vital facts or the period. Alongside this there will be an attempt to see the development of education during this period as something dynamic, arising in the minds or the founders of the Canterbury Association influenced as they were by mid-nineteenth century ideas about church and school transferred to the settlement, where the ideals were changed by impact with the colonial situation, where the old problems which the colonists had hoped to have left behind them appeared again, sometimes in another form. Here the main emphasis will be upon the control, management and maintenance of the education system as a whole.