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such legislation;
and certainly, as I have said, we have found it best to avoid such window-dressing in the past.
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 different system of an intermediate nature, which might well be acceptable to the law officers and educational and mass opinion, while involving us in fewer dangers. Under this 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 circumstances 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 arrange- ments were as good as could be devised, would make an order requiring the parents to adhere to the arrangements.
I
Something of this kind, if it proves a starter, would provide us with all the essentials of a flexible compulsory system without the attendant dis- advantages of more orthodox blanket legislation. emphasize however that the idea has not yet been fully examined, and will need close study before it can be introduced.
But in all educational matters it has to be constantly borne in mind that 50.7% of our population is under 21 years of age, and 37.9% under 15 years of age. The problem of providing for them all is therefore relatively many times more difficult than it is for the United Kingdom, whose systems have been built up over
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