NO PLACE FOR LESSONS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5368, 24 December 1928, Page 4

NO PLACE FOR LESSONS.

CHILDREN RUNNING WILD. LACK OF SCHOOL BUILDING. Three hundred children between the ages of five and eleven in outer London are running wild without a school. They are the children of the nqw London County Council estate at Castelnau, Barnes, and ar.e the resii due of the 800 youngsters whose parents occupy 643 houses there. There is no School for these children. The neighbouring schools and the more distant institutions have no room for them. Indeed, they are full to capacity. So the children are running wild, and are causing endless anxiety to their parents. The facts were given by Mrs O’Connor, wife of the secretary of the Tenants’ Association. She said: *The children are, running wild in the streets and on Barnes Common. Unless a serious step is taken it will be months before the temporary school is even built, and years before, the permanent one> which has only Just been started is finished. “The danger to these poor children is appalling. Many of them are from eight to eleven years of age and were ‘watched’ pupils at the schools they attended before coming here. That means that they were particularly bright in school, and wqre intended to be put up for. scholarship examinations when they neared the age of tweleve. These months of idlenesp and lack of school discipline must inevitably kill all chanc,e in. an academic way.

“The vicar of the parish, Rev. F. I. Harrison, has offered, his church room, which would, accommodate 200, but this has been declined by the Surrey education authorities.

“I have 250 of the Castelnau estate children to Sunday school in mv church each week. The disciplinary work needed is extremely hard, and I pity their first day school teachers.” Mr Forbes King, is one of the parents, “I have two boys,” hq said, “and they are rapidly becoming young radarmuffins, anfl.' almost yoiung savages. Wo came from Pimlico here last Easter. Donald (eight) and lan (six) went to St. Gabriel’s School there, and Donald, was being specially watchr ed as a probable; scholarship bby, but any chance of a scholarship he may have had has vanished oh Barnes, Common, where the two. spend nearly all their time.”

A high official,of the education' d;epartment of the Surrey County Couiw cil regretfully admitted that the statements are correct. “It is difficult for the public. to realise that the building of a school, even after the money has been granted, is a matter, for long special consideration by many committe|Bs, that many steps have to be taken, and that a great deal of detail Work is necessary. A temporary building, and the permanent school have now been started. The; temporary building, which wijl have six room's, should be ready easily by Christmas, and the other by Christmas 'of 1930.”