SCHOOL-LEAVING AGE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20290, 24 December 1927, Page 5

SCHOOL-LEAVING AGE.

AS SEEN BY AN ENGLISHMAN. The facts about the school-leaving age are quite clear, and it requires no great gift of prophecy to predict what is going to happen, said Lord Eustace Percy, president of the Board of Education in the course of a speech at Tunbridge \\ ells at the conference of the National Chamber of Trade. Everyone is agreed that the school ago cannot be raised compulsorily for five or six years in any case. Everyone is agreed that it is the duty of educational authorities to provide education for all children who wish voluntarily to stav at school until 15. There is a very strong tendency for children to stay on until 15 voluntarily, and educational opinion encourages parents. Probably not more than jO to 60 per cent, of the children who now leave the elementary schools at the age of 14 enter regular employment before the age of 15 A number of industries do not want to take children before that age, and the number is constantly growing. Even in agricultural districts parents are asking that their children may he allowed to"stuv on after 14. as there is no work for them at that age. _ , . , , , This being so, there is no, doubt what must inevitably happen a few years lienee. You will have a large number ot parents keeping their children at school, ami about the same time, owing to the falling biith rate education authorities will find that the schools they have been providing for children between 11 and 14, and ioi a large number of children voluntarily attending between 14 and lu, will -about suffice for the accommodation ot all tlnlYou 'will then have a strong demand from the parents themselves for thei raising of the school age; you will have the material means to satisfy that demand without, probably, groat extra expense; "nd yon will have little, if any, opposition from' artv quarter, except from the textile industries and the smaller distributee trader. Until that time comes no Government. of whatever party and whateyer thev mav say on the platform, will raise the'compulsory ago: when that t ime conics no Government will refuse to do so.