§ MR. S. SMITH (Flintshire)I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether his attention has been called to a statement made in the Report of Major Roe, one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Factories and Workshops for Birmingham, that children leaving school before they can enter a workshop as full-timers become errand boys and girls until the age of 13 years, and that, as the technical school at Birmingham will not take half-timers, and the public elementary schools are generally deficient of accommodation, there is always difficulty in getting a half-timer into a school; and whether he will consider the means by which technical schools can be enabled to receive half-timers?
§ SIR W. HART DYKEI have seen the Report in question, but in a previous paragraph to that quoted Major Roe states that the Birmingham School Board have themselves met the difficulty by raising the exemption standard to the sixth. There is nothing, so far as I am aware, to prevent a lad from attending a technical school half-time if the managers are willing to receive him; no case of such difficulty has, at any rate, been brought under the notice of the Department.