School-shirking
A resolution was passed at the annual conference of the National Union of Women Teachers urging the Government, local education authorities, magistrates and parents to co-operate in ensuring regular attendance at school. Both the president of the conference. Miss L. Turton, and Miss J. Craig stressed the dangers arising from the slackness of school attendance, which under war conditions is so grave that a large proportion of the senior school population are likely to leave school semi-illiterate. This is, of course, due to the dislocation in the evacuation areas and the difficulty of securing discipline in the reception areas, and in both cases by the fecklessness of that class of parents who constitute that "submerged tenth " to which attention has recently been called. That class is -in any case one of the sore spots in our social system which demand treatment, but under war conditions the younger generation arising in its midst is likely to be in a worse state than before if the corrective of regular schooling is lacking. Miss Turton said that there were no fewer than 9o,000 sub-normal children in elementary schools, for only 16,375 of whom is special school accommodation provided. Here is obviously a matter which should be dealt with in the new Education Bill. In the meantime there must be firmer insistence on school attendance.
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