ere TES EDITOR OF THE " BrscrATos.") SIR,—It may interest
some of your readers to know that for some years an Association in Edinburgh has provided, during the winter months, two meals a day, for a large number of very poor children, on condition of their attendance at school.
The cost of each meal is 111—breakfast, consisting of porridge and milk, or coffee and bread—dinner, of pea soup, or broth and bread. Attendance at morning school entitles the child to a ticket for dinner, and at afternoon school to a ticket for break- fast. The meals are not given to the children in the schools, but at centres in the various school districts of the city.
The Association was organised to assist the School Board in securing the attendance at school of the large class of children to be found in every city whose destitute condition would make their enforced attendance at school only a hardship. Every case for assistance is carefully examined by the Committee, who receive recommendations from the teachers of the schools and the compulsory officers of the School Board. The names of the children to whom aid is granted by the Association are inscribed on a separate register in the schools they attend, and the very high average of their attendance shows the good results of the work of the Association. I believe we have in regular attend- ance at the elementary schools in Edinburgh the very poorest class of children ; but without the help of this Association, the School Board, with all their compulsory powers, would have found it impossible to drive these children into school.—I am,
Sir, itc., FLORA C. STEVENSON. 13 Randolph Crescent, Edinburgh.
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