THE SCHOOL CHILD

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11422, 19 January 1923, Page 5

THE SCHOOL CHILD

METHODS IN BRITAIN COMPREHENSIVE SERVICE OF MEDICAL INSPECTION. HEALTH FIRST CONSIDERATION. The annual report cf Sir George Newman, Chief Medical Officer of the British Board of Education, for 1921, states that school medical inspection, established in 1907, has now developed, so far as the elementary schools are concerned, into a single compre hensive service. Every child is now inspected three times during the nine years of its school life: on admission, at eight years old, and before leaving school, as well as at other times when necessary. This means the annual medical examination of two and a half million children. In this service approximately 2000 medical men and 3000 school nurses are engaged. PHYSICAL TRAINING.

Other auxiliary services have developed, rather on the preventive side, besides medical inspection and treatment. / A new system of physical training is doing much to remedy physical impairment. Food, when recommended by the school doctor, is provided under the provisions of the Meals Act of 1906 for the mal-nourished necessitous child. Cleansing schemes and school baths are preventing much gross uncleanliness. Open-air schools are providing sunlight and fresh air to children who suffer from anaemia and other disabilities. Special schools are giving opportunities to the defective, the blind, the deaf, the feebleminded, and the cripples. Niirserv schools are helping the little children who are found to he suffering from physical defects. Special classes are arranged for the 10 per cent, of children who are proved to he seriously dull and backward. Sanatorium schools provide for the child suffering from tuberculosis. In fact, there is much justification for Sir George Newman’s claim that “the record of advance in the physical care of the school child since 1908 is one which is full of achievement and full of encouragement. It is incomparably greater than, anything of the same kind that has happened since 1870.”

COST NEARLY THREE MILLIONS. What is the oost of this service? Inevitably this has risen, and now amounts to £2,982,898, of which over a million is for medical inspection, and over a million for special schools. Approximately half of this is paid in the form of a grant-in-aid. The Geddes Committee after investigation considered this expenditure to be an economical investment in life, in health, and in capacity for works, and that curtailment would be to the disadvantage of the community. At the same time it is clear that the cost varies too much in practice. The average oost per child in public elementary schools is 5s for boroughs and 6s far urban districts, hut in' one borough it is as low as Is per child and in one urban district as high aa 21s per child. The average cost of administration is 13 per cent., but in one county area this costs as much as 34 per cent. Clearly more care might he taken in the actual spending of the money. MISSIONARIES OF HYGIENE. An encouraging part of the report concerns the relation of the school medical service to the national scheme of health reform—“ The child has be-

come the starting point of the new preventive medicine.’’ The fact that of the 316 school medical officers, 283 are also medioal officers of health of the sanitary authority in the same area, shows that co-ordination is being encouraged, and ovdapping avoided! _ The section, toe, r ding the functions of the schooi . tor as regards the employment of the .600,000 children who leave every year is full of wisdom. Clearly education must be combined with social understanding of industry. It is suggested that the school medical officer should look out over a wide field of inquiry conducted on medico-psychological lines with a view of fitting the round peg into the round hole.

The keynote of this stimulating report is the need for the school medical officer and his colleagues to play the part of a missionary of hygiene so as to produce a child who will he capable in time of taking his place worthily os a citizen and a workman.