§ MR. WEIR (Ross and Cromarty)To ask the Secretary for Scotland, seeing that in the Report on Primary Education in Ireland by Mr. F. H. Dale, His Majesty's Inspector of Schools, attention is directed in Paragraph 44 to the fact that in some cases the only provision made for seating infants consists of a form without desk or back, while in English schools special desks for infants are practically universal: and, seeing that the seating accommodation made for infants in schools in the Highland Crofting Counties invariably consists of a form without a back, will the Board of Education for Scotland consider the advisability of recommending a better system of seating for young children.
(Answered by Air. A. Graham Murray.) The Department is fully alive to the importance of having proper desks for infants as well as other scholars, and has laid down the rule that the benches should be fitted with backs. The chief inspector in those districts states that he invariably urges the observance of this rule and that the cases are few where the fault is now found.
†See (4) Debates, cxxx, 837.