[Report 1922] / School Medical Officer of Health, Northampton Borough.

  • Northampton (England). Borough Council.
Date:
1922
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1922] / School Medical Officer of Health, Northampton Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The co-operation of teachers, school attendance officers, and volun¬ tary workers was commented on and acknowledged in the report for 1921, and the remarks made though endorsed need not be repeated here. One point, however, needs emphasis, and that is the help which can be given by the head teacher in ascertaining exactly the full number of children within the particular group about to be inspected, prior to the visit of inspection, so that they may be readily available. It has been the experience that in some schools a number of children are missed from the inspection because the teacher is less careful in finding out and presenting all within the group. It seems quite practicable to find from the registers all children in the intermediate group (i.e. about eight years of age) yet it has happened that on the arrival of the inspecting staff a teacher when appealed to has merely asked all children who were eight years of age to stand in class, and without verifying the numbers from the register pre¬ sented these for medical inspection. By such methods many omissions must occur. It is still difficult to impress some teachers with the importance of keeping readily available in connection with each child the Record Card of Medical Inspections and Treatment, filing them under some system in school and transferring them along with the child when he moves from the infants to upper departments, or from school to school. Many records disappear and valuable information, which cost considerable time and trouble to acquire, is thus lost from lack of interest in those reasonably held responsible. In spite of exceptional experience such as the above, the school medical service receives generally much appreciated and valuable assistance from the teachers. WELLINGTON PLACE SPECIAL SCHOOL. This School for mental defectives is periodically visited and the children in attendance inspected. Miss Longland, the Headmistress, has had long experience in this special work and devotes great attention to the care and interests of the pupils after they have left school. The statistics for the present year I have in the main obtained from her. Number on register at end of previous year .62 Number admitted during present year . 9 Number left during present year .10 Number of register at end of present year .61 Average attendance for the year . 57T Of those who left during the year, five boys and four girls have reached the age limit of 16 years and one boy was transferred to the Monyhull Colony. Twenty-eight children were examined as to their suitability for ad¬ mission and eight were certified as suitable, seven of whom are now in attendance. Two who had left previous to this year were re-admitted. One of these had temporarily left the town and the other had been ex¬ empted as physically unfit but has recovered.