§ Colonel RAWSONasked the President of the Board of Education if he will consider the desirability of empowering local school attendance committees at their discretion to permit parents residing from one to three miles distant from any public elementary school to keep any child at home on school days in extreme wet weather, or whenever, in the opinion of the medical practitioner, the child can only attend school at risk to his or her health?
Mr. PEASEUnder the Education Acts children of school age are required to attend school unless there is a reasonable excuse, and it is one of the reasonable excuses specified in the Acts that a child has been prevented from attending school by sickness or any unavoidable cause. It1152W has been held to be within the discretion of a school attendance committee to accept as a reasonable excuse other grounds than those specified in the Acts, and I think it is unlikely that local education authorities (who have the powers of school attendance committee) would prosecute a parent who kept a child at home "in extreme wet weather."