ssociation at school.

There was evidence that one girl had incited seven boys to sexual
misbehaviour on the way home from a co-educational school. Thorough
investigation proved to the Committee that the group came from the same
neighbourhood and had become known to one another from their home and
street association. Acts of indecency had occurred long before they went
to the post-primary school.

Senior pupils of an intermediate school were concerned in depravity,
both heterosexual and homosexual. The trouble probably spread through
the acquaintanceships made at school, but in all cases the history of
the instigators, in intelligence and environment, showed either that
they were already concerned in immoral acts outside the school or that
they had home circumstances conducive to delinquency.

In many of the cases that were brought to the notice of the Committee
the name of the school was associated with the offender, even although
the offences did not occur within the school or arise from it. This
linking of the school with the offender is unfortunate, as it is
unsettling to the other pupils of the school and disturbing to the
parents of the district.

=(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 Divis