SCHOOL ON WET DAYS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume L, Issue 16425, 8 May 1924, Page 9

SCHOOL ON WET DAYS.

POSITION UNDER THE ACT

The Wellington school committees recently made a protest against what was termed an "unjust regulation" of the Education Department, which abolished the practice of a one o'clock school day in wet weather, and required the children to attend for two hours in the afternoon. When the attention of the Minister for Education was called, to these complaints, he said : "The association is under a misapprehension. The. department has riever made any regulation at all. All the department has done was to call the attention of the board to the statute law—that is. section 56, subsection 4, of the Education Act, which reads as follows:—'The school shall be kept open for at least four hours each day, two of which in the forenoon and two in the afternoon shall be consecutive.'

"So far from being a new matter," added the Minister. "Parliament first made the law in 1877, and it has been in force ever since. I shall be pleased to discuss the matter with the school committees when they come to see me, but they will see that, as I say, their complaint that the department has recently framed a regulation has no foundation in fact."