SCHOOL ATTENDANCES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 96, 25 April 1911, Page 9

SCHOOL ATTENDANCES.

THE NEW REGULATION. For the quarter ended 31st March last the Berhampore School, with a roll number of 839, averaged 96.5 per cent, of the roll. In his report submitted at last night's meeting of householders, the headmaster (Mr. G. Flux) suggested that fine weather and the absence of epidemic undoubtedly contributed to this excellent result, another probably being the new regulation, which forbids the absence of children of sohool age on any day the school is open. "The old regulation," said Mr. Flux, "allowed children. -to be absent on one day in the week, without liability to a penalty, but a certain section of the community was shortsighted enough^to habitually take advantage of the regulation, and keep their children away for one day in the week. Hence the new regulation, which will not be a, hardship to conscientious parents, but which will be an undoubted j benefit to those children who have been kept away to run messages and on similar trivial pretexts. One longs for a public opinion which will be sufficiently i sound to recognise that to keep children from school without sufficient warrant is something approaching a crime, and that irregularity is the parent of many evils." A very great majority of parents, he added, have long recognised this, but there was still a small minority who needed the spur of the law to induce them, to do their duty by their children. " I appeal to such parents," said tho speaker, "to support teachers by rendering an appeal to the law unnecessary." They need be under no apprehension that teachers would strain the law, but parents still recognise that teachers were, in this connection, requested by the authorities to see the law is obeyed. "In this connection, too," Mr. Flux added, "to prevent mieunderGtandings, I would ask, parents to bo good enough always to send the reason for their children's absence."