Whatever outdoor relief was given to the parent in respect of the child, the policy of the Central Authority was one of absolute non-intervention with regard to its treatment. No directions were given, either for its education or for any other of its needs. The only direction that we find is a decision that the local authority must not pay the school fees for any such child; and must not even add with this view 2d. per week per child to the outdoor relief granted to the parent.[154] [154] _Official Circular_, 31st January 1844, No. 31, pp. 178-9. When the child entered the workhouse it passed out of its former classification and entered into an entirely different one. For outdoor relief, as we have seen, the policy of the Central Authority was to distinguish among children only according to the kind of parents they had. Inside the workhouse, the policy of the Central Authority was to regard this classification as irrelevant, and to place all children, of whatever parentage, in categories, dependent on their own age, sex and health. They were either sick or well; and also either (1) Children under seven; (2) Boys between seven and fifteen; or (3) Girls between seven and fifteen. The treatment of these categories is so inextricably mixed up with that of the other inmates of the workhouse that we relegate the matter to our subsequent sections. The Central Authority gave no direction to change the system under which some local authorities sent their pauper children to establishments kept for private profit. In 1838, this system was implicitly sanctioned by a long instructional letter, dealing with "Mr. Aubin's establishment for pauper children at Norwood," where the children were employed in the workshop on alternate days, and were under the special care of a chaplain.[155] [155] Instructional Letter, 1838, in Fifth Annual Report, 1839, p. 76. But the Central Authority was evidently uneasy about the quarter of a million pauper children, of whom it was gradually getting some tens of thousands in the great general workhouses on which it had insisted.[156] Reports on the training of the workhouse children were called for, and a valuable series was published in 1841, in which the establishment of separate boarding schools was suggested, where the children could receive both elementary schooling and industrial training. This proposal united the opposition of the boards of guardians, who objected to a new authority, to that of those who demurred to giving the pauper children any better education than the children of the lowest independent labourer.[157]