The Committee recommends: 

(a) That the Department should consider whether some better method of educating these children can be evolved.  It feels that the mere granting of an exemption certificate may transfer the problem from the school, where there is at least formal oversight, to the community, where this is not the case.

(b) Where the underlying reason for exemption is the misconduct of the child, the Senior Inspector should have power to grant the exemption subject to the child being supervised by the Child Welfare Division of the Department.

=(4) Relations With the Child Welfare Division=

From the evidence received it is clear that principals of schools would welcome a closer liaison, by regulation, with the Child Welfare Division.  A high degree of co-operation already exists in some places, but it depends on the personalities of the people concerned and is not general.

With a full realization of the desirability of secrecy in the affairs of a delinquent child, but also with the knowledge that the principal of a school should know as much as possible of his pupils, and in most cases has known them longer, and in conditions of less tension than the Child Welfare Officer, it is suggested that: 

  (a) Where a child in a school, or transferred to it, has come to
  the notice of the Child Welfare Division for acts of delinquency,
  the principal of the new school should be informed.

(b) Where a pupil is to be charged before the Children’s Court the principal should be asked to make a recommendation regarding the future of the child either independently of, or jointly with, that of the Child Welfare Officer.  At the present time the principal is merely asked to report to the Child Welfare Officer, although, from his longer experience of the child, he may be in a better position than that officer to suggest what should be done.

=(5) Sex Instruction in School=

The views of the Committee on the whole subject of sex instruction are given elsewhere in the report.  Here it is emphasized that, apart from the biological aspect as a part of nature study in the primary schools and general science in the post-primary schools, the school in general is not the place for class instruction in sex matters.

Incidental features of sex hygiene will arise naturally from physical education and can be adequately treated there.

It is felt that the teaching of the fuller aspects of the sex relation between men and women requires an emotional link between the teacher and the taught, and it should not be looked on as a duty of the school to forge this link.  But where ignorance persists, through the failure of the natural agencies, the school should try, if a suitable person is available on the staff, or by the employment of a specialist, to remedy the omission.