3.
attitudes and customs which would make a system of com-
pulsory primary education, if it rere to be fully enforced
now, resented and opposed by too many for comfort.
5. There is also the problem of the communist schools, whose curricula would nave to be formally accepted as satis-
factory for the purposes of the law, when we all know they
are not. To have to take the view that attendance at these
schools was acceptable might be nearly as damaging to public confidence as to refuse to take it, and hence to have to force
the children into other schools, would be to our relations
with China. There are other problems also.
6
Such a measure, then, if introduced, could only be an openly acknowledged window-dressing measure, widely unen- forced. I do not think the law officers here would feel
able to recommend the introduction of such legislation;
certainly, as I have said, we have found it best to avoid such window-dressing in the past.
Under this
and
7. As an alternative, therefore, I had already, before receiving your letter, given instructions that a study should be undertaken to assess the practicability of a rather differ-
ent system of an intermediate nature, which might well be
acceptable to the law officers and educational and mass
opinion, while involving us in few dangers. system, when for example case-workers of the Social Welfare
Department or the voluntary agencies, or Labour Department
Inspectors, came upon cases where children were unnecessarily
and wilfully being deprived of a primary education, they would, after consulting the Education Department, devise arrange- ments for the education of the child, suitable to the circum--
stances of the child and the family, and endeavour to persuade
the parents to accept it. Should persuasion fail, it would be made possible to take the child before a magistrate who, if
satisfied that the arrangements were as good as could be
/devised,