SCHOOL ATTENDANCE.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXII, Issue 2796, 29 May 1911, Page 3

SCHOOL ATTENDANCE.

DODGING THE INSPECTOR

Various excuses have been offered by parents for the irregular attendance of their children at schools but few people surely would go to the lengths attributed by Inspector Black to parents in the Dubbo district, says the Sydney Daily Telegraph. "In some cases," he reports, " to avoid the law the family removes just beyond the two-mile limit, when the attendance of boys below 14 becomes most perfunctory." The inspector does not specify the materials of which the ancestral home is constructed; With a tent, or even a bark mansion, it would not be at all difficult ; but there- is something decidedly humorous in shifting a bush home, with all its belongings, just that Tommy may be beyond the school distance ! Incidentally the inspector again draws attention to the rabbit evil. "In many of the smaller bush schools," he writes, " though there are plenty of girls over 14 years of age, the attendance of a boy over 14 years is a rarity. Boys are withdrawn as soon as possible—some to assist in rabbiting, some in harvesting, and some to act as substitutes for hired labour, which is hard to be obtained. In very few cases is the withdrawal of the boy absolutely imperative. As the girl is riot so good a wage-earner as the boy, she is allowed to remain at school much longer than her brother, who is withdrawn as soon as the law allows." The best attendances are invariably met with in the subsidised schools, since the

parents know that if a good attendance is not kept up the teacher will become dissatisfied and seek employment elsewhere.