§ MR. MORRELL (Oxfordshire, Woodstock)To ask the Secretary to the Board of Education whether any, and if so which, local authorities have issued notices exempting from the prohibitions and restrictions of the Act (39 and 40 Vic., c. 79, s. 9) the employment of children above the age of eight years for the necessary operation of husbandry and the ingathering of crops for a period not exceeding six weeks, exclusive of the time during which the school is closed for the holidays; and whether any, and if so which, local authorities for any district have by by-law under the Act (62 and 63 Vic., c. 13, s. 1) for any parish within their district fixed thirteen years as the minimum age for exemption from school attendance in the case of children to be employed in agriculture, providing that in such parish such children over eleven and under thirteen years of age who have passed the standard fixed for partial exemption from school attendance by the by-laws of the local authority shall not 559 be required to attend school more than 250 times in any year.
(Answered by Sir William Anson.) The Board have been advised that the result of Section 4 of the, Education Act of 1880 was to confine the operation of Section 9 of the Act of 1876 to children who do not come within the operation of the by-laws. So far as I am aware, no Orders have been issued under the section since 1880. Thirty-five counties have adopted the agricultural by-law under Section 1 of the Act of 1899 for the whole, or practically the whole, of their area. It is also in force in many parts of the eleven counties for which new by-laws have not yet been approved since the Act of 1902 came into operation. The by-law has also been adopted by a few urban authorities.