BIG SCHOOL PROBLEM

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 290, 7 December 1928, Page 11

BIG SCHOOL PROBLEM

CHILDREN RUNNING WILD NO PLACE FOE LESSONS. Three hundred children between the ages of five and eleven in outer London are running wild without a school. They arc the children of residents of the new London County Council estate at Castelnau, Barnes, and are the residue of the 800 youngsters whose parents occupy 643 houses there. There is no school for these children, Tho neighbouring schools, and tho more distant institutions have no room for them. Indeed, they are full to capacity. So the children are running wild, and are causing endless anxiety to their parents. The facts were given by Mrs O’Connor, wife of the secretary of tho Tenants’ Association. She said:—“The children are running wild in the streets and on Barnes Common. Unless a serious step is taken it will be months before the temporary school is built, and years before the permanent one, which has only just been started, is finished. “The danger to these poor children is appalling. Many of them are from eight to eleven years of age, and were ‘watched’ pupils at the shools they attended before coming here. That means that they were particularly bright in school, and were intended to be put up for scholarship examinations when they neared the age of twelve. These months of idleness and lack of, school discipline must inevitably kill all chance in an academic way. “The vicar of the parish, Rev. F. I. Harrison, has offered his church room, which would acommodate 200, but this has been declined by the Surrey education authorities. “I have 250 of the Castlenau estate children to Sunday school in my church each week. The disciplinary work needed is extremely hard and I pity their first day school teachers.’’ Mr Forbes King is one of the parents. “I have two boys,” he said, “and they arc rapidly becoming young ragamuffins and almost young savages. We came from Pimlico here Last Easter. Donald (eight) and lan (six) went to St. Gabriel’s School there, and Donald was being specially watched as a probable scholarship boy, but any chance of a scholarship he may have had has vanished on Barnes Common, where the two spend nearly all their time.” A high official of the Education Department of the Surrey County Council regretfully admitted that the statements are correct “It is difficult for the public to realise that the building of a school, even after the money has been granted, is a matter for long special consideration by many committees, that many steps have to be taken, and that a great deal of detail work is necessary. A temporary building and the permanent school have now been started. The temporary building, which will have six rooms, should bo ready easily by Christmas, and the other by Christmas, 1930.”