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Report of the Medical Officer (Education).
The Council's awards for the training of elementary school teachers provide a complete scheme
by means of which a boy or girl may proceed by various stages from the public elementary school to a
training college for teachers, and when conducting the examination the medical officer is required to
certify that the candidates are in a fit state of health to take advantage of a scholarship, and that
they are likely ultimately to satisfy the requirements of the Board of Education for recognition as
certificated teachers. The ages of the candidates are as follows—
Pupil teachers, 16 to 18 (pupil teachers of handicrafts not less than 14 on the 31st July in
the year of the award) ; bursars, 16 to 18 ; student teachers, not less than 17 ; training college
students, not less than 18 on 1st August of the year of admission to a college ; domestic economy
training scholars, 18 to 30.
The results of the medical examination are shown in Appendix XIII.

It is a very great hardship indeed, that persons who have spent years in training for the teaching
profession, may be finally rejected as unsuitable for superannuation on some medical condition which
when the sheltered condition and the great expectation of life of teachers is considered, probably will not,
on the whole affect a member of the profession as it would a member of the general community. Candidates
for the teaching profession ought to have the option of medical examination as qualification for
superannuation should they pass their examinations at a much earlier age, say, seventeen, and should not
be rejected for intercurrent illnesses, which leave comparatively trivial defects, such as slight roughness
of a heart valve, after years spent in training. There ought in any case to be definite rules formulated
by the department as to the conditions which are acceptable or non acceptable.
Personal Hygiene Schemes.
The London County Council (General Powers) Act, 1907, and the Children Act, 1908, confer upon
the Council as the Education Authority the power of conveying to suitable premises and cleansing
children found to be verminous after the parents have been duly notified of the condition. To utilise
the powers thus conferred, the Council has arranged for 24 cleansing stations to be opened ultimately,
but pending the completion of these arrangements, the original scheme for securing the treatment of
verminous heads has been continued with the success experienced in former years. The procedure of
this scheme is as follows :—
The school nurse examines all the children at a school and notes the condition of their heads,
using strict precautions against contagion. The head teacher is then supplied with a white card for
each child whose head requires cleansing. The card* which draws attention to the condition and
contains directions for cleansing, is enclosed in a sealed envelope and sent home by the child. At the
end of the first week all cases not treated are separated from the other children and a red card with full
Elementary
Schools—
Verminous
Heads.
12532
F 2