of Deaf-Mutes, in London. Compulsory attendance The School Attendance Act 1901, which was enacted on 7 November 1901, required children who were deaf or blind be given "efficient and suitable" education between the ages of seven and sixteen. Parents who could not do so were obliged to send their children to an "Institution" that the Minister of Education directed the child attend. The requirements were carried forward into the 1904 consolidation and reprint of the Education Act. In practice, this required parents to enrol their deaf children at the Sumner institution, or else educate them privately and at their own expense. Retirement of the first Director Director van Asch retired at the end of March 1906. Miss van Asch, his daughter, who had taught at the school for 17 years also retired. School for the Deaf At the end of his report for the 1907 year, the new Director, J. E. Stephens, observed that the school's official title was misleading and requested that "The School for the Deaf" be used instead. In 1958, the Boy's House was burnt down in the early hours of the morning. The old main building was centred near the hills and Evans Pass. Oralist beginnings The Milan Congress of September 1880 resolved it was best to use Oral education for the deaf. Although this method of deaf education was not universally supported, with some British and American educators of a contrary opinion. In 1980, the 15th International Congress on the Education of the Deaf (ICED) held in Hamburg, West Germany, repudiated 1880 resolutions. Oral education persisted up until the late 1970s, the philosophy of the school was to prevent the students from using sign language (now New Zealand's third official language). Children were taught exclusively via oral methods, forcing them to learn to lipread and speak, with punishments being given for use of sign language. Nevertheless, school student also acquired sign language from some of the adult support staff, who were also deaf, as well as older pupils and their peers in various social settings away from the classroom and not supervised by their teachers. Mainstreaming From 1966, some deaf students were educated in a deaf classroom at Sumner School, the nearby state primary school with the intent of socializing deaf student into a hearing school and familiarising students of the two schools with each other. The inter-change of students and teachers between the two