EDUCATION OF CHILDREN

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 November 1939, Page 8

EDUCATION OF CHILDREN

SCHOOLS TO BE REOPENED.

[BRITISH OFFICIAL WIRELESS.]

(Received November 2, 11 a.m.) RUGBY, November 1.

Lord de la Warr, in the Lords, referring to the fact that more than half of the schoolchildren who, if their parents had taken advantage of the Government’s voluntary scheme for evacuating them to a reception area, could be at -school in comparative safety, were in fact still in vulnerable areas, and were receiving little or no education, said there were two solutions, firstly, the compulsory removal of all remaining children out of vulnerable areas, a measure the Government would be unwilling to take in any but the most-desperate circumstances, and secondly, some measure of reopening the schools in vulnerable areas, which was a course on which the Government had decided.

This decision must not be taken as an “all-clear” signal for a return to the evacuation areas. The Government had been influenced solely by the fact that, as a nation, they could not afford to let 750,000 children grow up without education, school discipline, or medical care. The numbers had been limited, and many schools would be operating on a double-shift basis. The Government nevertheless had decided that as many schools as possible in the evacuation areas should be opened for the education of children of parents who desired them to attend.