income from the children at this time, and it could not be stopped. The

potato lifting was soon followed by the annual agricultural removal time when

up to twenty pupils could leave for another area. Some of those leaving did

not even come to school at all after the school re-opened after the summer

recess. Mr. Findlay almost invariably found that those children who came into

the area at this time were behind the other pupils and work was slowed down

to accommodate them. Bad weather and bad road conditions also made atten-

dance difficult for those children who did want to attend school. And every

year there was a series of epidemics which further lowered the attendance.

There was nothing Mr. Findlay could do about the weather and the roads

or illness, but he was constantly pressing the School Officer to do something

about unnecessary absences, although without much success. Whether Mr.

Thom more or less gave up because of the sheer size of the problem, or

because the School Board did not back him up sufficiently, or a combination

of both, it is impossible to tell. Mr. Findlay wrote in his log book, ‘The

School Officer owned that he had never reported them’, and ‘Officer owned

he had not reported any absentees for more than three months while during

that time the absentees have been from 80-90 per week’. On another occasion

he recorded: ‘The School Board Officer called and informed me that at their

meeting on Monday night they had resolved not to interfere in the meantime

with the absentees and irregular attenders’.

Mr. Walker, schoolmaster of the North School, also had his problems with

attendance and in getting Mr. Thom to do anything about them. He devised

a scheme whereby there was a 25% return of fees paid during the year ‘made

in the cases of pupils who have been perfectly regular in attendance throughout

the year and whose fees had been punctually paid’. At the end of the year

(1875) he applied to the School Board for the return of the 25% he had pro-

mised. The School Board told Mr. Walker that he was to refer absentees to

the School Officer.

For a while, in 1876, the School Board was too occupied with the situation

in Boarhills to pay any attention to what was happening in Strathkinness.

Mr. Thom wrote to the Board: ‘The teachers in Boarhills complain of children

leaving school at 11 o’clock to go the messages, thus losing the main lesson

of the day. They would like to know if anything can be done about it as it

is a daily occurrence’. Some parents were having their children take turns

at going to school, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. They said

the mother was forced to go out to work and the children were needed to

look after younger children and ‘to mind the house’. The news soon got

around and others started to do the same thing. The School Board decided

that it was better for the children to get some education than none, and left

it at that.

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