TRUANCY!
Even the slowest learners attended school every day in my tender years, some slipped a year to become more relevant in the learning stakes but non attendance was not an option, ever.

I did not encounter a person who could not read until my late forties when I handed a team list to a man at Indoor bowls in rural Wairarapa to receive a rather terse retort “are you taking the piss”, he could not read.
A fully functioning adult, mid thirties who held a responsible job driving heavy machinery where he was required to create his billing hours to be charged to clients.

Now I understand that in this modern world where being able to press buttons on a device can enormously get such a person through life, however attendance at learning dropping as low as 40% as alleged recently, must be alarming for all but the Political classes intent on creating more dumb people who can easily be controlled to give the three yearly support for their socialism.

In recent history the long summer holiday break was introduced to avoid necessary absenteeism related to gathering the Harvest that was then very labour intensive. Stooking and stacking of grains in sheaves to await the mobile mill for threshing, gathering fodder as hay in forkfulls onto a dray to be stacked could all be accomplished by youths with pitchforks. In my youth I remember being “the crow” who distributed sheaves to the stacker correctly aligned for him to place as the stack grew to that magical shape. so wonderfully recorded by “Constable” and other artists.

For sure there was a 50% failure to achieve school certificate as a leaving grade from high school but that could only be delivered by scaling the exam results with the failing students still going on to achieving in manual skills that have been largely replaced by automation, in trades and labouring.

Today in an increasing technological world any parent who considers their offspring will make a way in the world is guilty of gross child abuse, it is little wonder the gravitation to the comfort envelope og gang existence and the associated criminality where animal cunning can compensate for the lack of personal advancement as individuals. It is a sort of commune really where the basic components need no education only an understanding of power along with that structure.
An educated person at a very basic level will not succumb to that degraded status except that “welfare” in all its manifestations will make it possible by totally removing the human instinct to make a difference at the personal level.