SCOTTISH SCHOOLS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 158, 5 June 1937, Page 15

SCOTTISH SCHOOLS.

DECLINE IN I’OPULATON. The effect of the declining birth-rate on the school population of Scotland is discussed in the report of the Scottish Education Department for 193 G. The average roll in 1933-34 was 845,600, it is stated. In 1934-5 it fell to 827,506 and in 1935-6 to 813,000. The rate of “wastage” caused by death, ill-health, and migration had fallen appreciably in recent years. If the total number of school children between the ages of five and fourteen in 1928 and in 1936 was compared with the corresponding number of births it was found that the “wastage” had fallen from 26.3 to 19.6 per cent in those eight years, with the result that there were 62,000 children now at school who would not have been there if the rate had remained what it was in 1928. The two main causes for this improvement were the cheek on tho flow of emigration and the improved standard of health among the children in a groat measure resulting from the work of the public health, services.