The Work of an Approved School

There are in England and Wales, 71 residential schools known as Approved or Home Office Schools. Their function is to receive young delinquents and neglected children from the Juvenile Courts and turn them into useful citizens. Before the Children and Young Persons' Act, 1933, these Schools were known officially as Reformatories and Industrial Schools. This distinction has now vanished and they are all known as Approved or Home Office Schools. Those for boys are classified in three groups: Junior, Intermediate and Senior, admitting respectively boys between the ages of 10 and 13, 13 and 15, 15 and 17. Those for girls are classified in two groups with the dividing age at 15. Children under 12 may be detained until they attain the age of 15: young persons over 16 until they are 19; and the others for three years. The majority of the Schools (55) are under voluntary management and the remainder are provided by Local Authorities. Most of the Schools also