SCHOOL ATTENDANCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3750, 12 February 1907, Page 2

SCHOOL ATTENDANCE.

The attendance during the last week at the local Public School was but a very slight improvement on that of the previous week. Children were kept at home on the slightest and most frivolous pretexts in fact in several cases children presented notes of excuse which were obviously written by themselves and three of which were admitted to be forgeries. In two cases boys with the greatest effrontery took it upon themselves to apply for exemption orders ! needless to say they were not granted. In Foxton there are parents of over fifty children who have so little respect for the education or the future welfare of their offspring that they religiously rob them of one day’s schooling in every week and thus handicap them in their competition with the others to the extent of one in four. There are boys and girls, 13 and 14 years of age struggling along in the work of the third and fourth standards when they should have passed the sixth and left school. The average attendance for the week was 225, Roll No. 279. There were therefore 54 absentees every morning and afternoon of the week, and a large number of parents will certainly be forced to give ’ their explanations in the local Court.