CONTINUATION CLASSES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15717, 18 September 1914, Page 3

CONTINUATION CLASSES.

ATTENDANCE COMPULSORY.

FOUE PARENTS PROSECUTED.

Four fathers were proceeded against in the Police Court yesterday, on charges that their children had failed to attend the compulsory evening continuation classes at Devonport.

Mr. R. P. Towle, prosecuting on behalf of the Education Board, said that the prosecutions ere test cases. By the 1910 amenument to the Education Act, Education Boards were empowered to make regulations requiring the attendance at technical schools of children between the ages of 14 and 17 years, who were not otherwise receiving suitable education. The Auckland Board required attendance on two nighte a week, for two hours each time, of tie pupils on the roll of the Devonport technical school. Notices had Deen sent to the four defendants, G. H. Broughton, G. S. Croot, J. Cunningham, and C. Pitts, informing them that their children* had been irregular in their attendance, and the present prosecutions were the outcome of continued irregularity in attendance.

The defendant Broughton, who did not appear, stated in a letter that he did not know that his child was not going to th# classes regularly. Pitts and Cunningham made the same excuse, the latter stating that a picture theatre between his girl's home and the technical school had proved to be a greater attraction to the young mind than continuation classes. The defendant Croot said that his eon was so busy that he had no time to do everything. He was supposed to go to drill on the same night as the classes were held and, as yet, he had not mastered the art of being in two places at once. Mr. E. C. Cutten, S.M., said that it showed gross negligence on the part of those parents who thought that their children had gone to school when in reality they were at picture shows or elsewhere. The law required the children to go to these compulsory classes, and the parents were responsible for seeing that, they did so. In Croot's case the boy could have easily got his drill night changed, so that wa no valid excuse. As the cases had been brought to Court, as a warning to other parents, the Education Board did not ask for a heavy penalty. The minimum fine of ss, with 28s costs, was imposed in each case.