David THankyou ! That is a very detailed explanation. It turns on its head my original thoughts that the children were receiving a poor education......so all the exempted children had actually achieved a satisfactory standard and minimum attendance ! I did see two comments " exempt on account of attendance" and I thought that meant they had not attended enough . I am nearly at the end of my transcribing and hope to pass on disc copes of the data in a form that can be searched,to the school and other interested groups. Thanks to all who responded Gill Sent from my iPad