"the majority of witnesses [that is, victims] reported their families occupational status as unskilled", p.12
"70% of witnesses received no second-level [high school] education,..., the majority of witnesses seen by the Committee reported being in manual and unskilled occupations for their entire working lives", p.15
comes further confirmation of my view that this system was, in large part, an effort to control the Irish working class. Irish elites, both nationalist and unionist, got a bad fright in the period 1917-1922 when several Soviets emerged, for instance in Limerick (www.limericksoviet.com); and widespread agitation among landless farm workers (a far larger segement of working class than industrial workers) was growing. The nationalist IRA was required, in many instances, to fight both British occupation and the Irish working class.
The expansion of the industrial school system to the extent that more children were imprisoned in Ireland than in similar institutions in Britain, was, I believe, a part of the effort to keep the Irish working and underclass 'under control'.