SCHOOL LEAVING AGE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22355, 19 March 1938, Page 3

SCHOOL LEAVING AGE

REPORTS OF EVASION DENIED

IN WELLINGTON

(press association telegram.)

WELLINGTON, March 18. Reports that school children below the legal leaving age were abandoning their studies to seek employment were emphatically denied by the Wellington educational authorities to-day. If that was the case elsewhere In New Zealand, it was certainly not so at Wellington, they said. Any cases which might have occurred were most exceptional and explainable in the light of special circumstances. The officials of the Labour Department saw that the law was strictly observed in this respect. The secretary of the Wellington Education Board (Mr W. I. Deavoll) said that in the Wellington district the Labour Depirtment officials and the education authorities co-operated to preclude anything ,of the sort taking place. Sometimes it happened that a boy was within a few weeks or days of attaining the leaving age, and he found an opportunity of a job which might not come his way again. In such circumstances the position was very difficult to decide. Such cases had at times given him no little anxiety, as it was not wished to cause hardship for either the parent or the cMd. Mr Deavoirs summary of the position was confirmed by prominent Wellington headmasters, all of whom agreed that there was no exploitation of child labour being connived at in Wellington, either by parents, departmental officers, or education authorities. '