TREATMENT OF TRUANTS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9080, 2 May 1908, Page 4

TREATMENT OF TRUANTS.

What are we to cfo with our truant school children —tnose to whom nothing seems so terrible as attendance at their classes'.' —is a question which has often been asked but never satisfactorily answered. At any rate no adequate provision ha 3 yet been made by the authorities for this class of juvenile offenders. At present the incorrigible • truants are: committed, to the industrial schuols,, but this is scarcely a suitable method, of treating the truants, for truancy is not a crime, and industrial schools are the prisons of juveniles who. display criminal tendencies. Thus the taint of criminality rests upon the truant children placed within those institutions. Pointed attention has just been drawn by the Truant Officer in. Wellington to this undesirable state of things, and the Education Boardhas referred the question to the Works Committee with th? object of considering the establishment of. a truant school for the E.iucation District. Something should certainly be done, and without delay, to provide in some saner way for incorrigible truants. The Act gives power for the establishment of truant schools in order that recalcitrant children may be effectively dealt with, but the State has done nothing to give effect to the provision, neither has any Education Board moved in the matter until now. It is to be hoped that the Wellington board will see its way to set up a truant and that the Education Boards throughout the dominion will follow the example.