Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents

by New Zealand. Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents

(3) School Leaving Age

The school leaving age is now 15, but there are obviously some pupils, in the upper forms of primary schools and the lower in post-primary, who, either through lack of ability or lack of interest, are not only [not][3] deriving "appreciable benefit" from their further education, but are indeed unsettling and sometimes dangerous to other children.

The School Age Regulations (1943/202) permit of exemption from attendance at school in cases where the Senior Inspector of Schools in any district certifies that a child of 14 who has completed the work of Form II is not likely to derive any appreciable benefit from the facilities available at a convenient school or the Correspondence School.

The Committee recommends:

(a) That the Department should consider whether some better method of educating these children can be evolved. It feels that the mere granting of an exemption certificate may transfer the problem from the school, where there is at least formal oversight, to the community, where this is not the case.

(b) Where the underlying reason for exemption is the misconduct of the child, the Senior Inspector should have power to grant the exemption subject to the child being supervised by the Child Welfare Division of the Department.

(4) Relations With the Child Welfare Division

From the evidence received it is clear that principals of schools would welcome a closer liaison, by regulation, with the Child Welfare Division. A high degree of co-operation already exists in some places, but it depends on the personalities of the people concerned and is not general.

With a full realization of the desirability of secrecy in the affairs of a delinquent child, but also with the knowledge that the principal of a school should know as much as possible of his pupils, and in most cases has known them longer, and in conditions of less tension than the Child Welfare Officer, it is suggested that:

(a) Where a child in a school, or transferred to it, has come to the notice of the Child Welfare Division for acts of delinquency, the principal of the new school should be informed.