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122
During the year the boys made 25,235 and the girls 9,381 attendances.
Fifty-two free passes are now given to scholars when they can swim 60 yards;
of these 1790 were used during 1913.
Building Operations. Nothing has been done beyond the ordinary
repairs necessary to keep the buildings in good order, except the internal
painting and distempering of the National and St. James' schools during the
summer vacation.
In February, in consequence of complaints of bad smells from Croyland
Road schools, the old earthenware sink wastes were replaced by proper 1¼ in.
lead wastes, with traps, which were made to discharge over a trapped gully
outside the buildings.
The playgrounds at Eldon Road, Raynham Road and Croyland Road were
tar-dressed and sanded during the summer vacation.
Closets are in some cases of the trough pattern, with a weir at the lower
end, and a tank of sixty gallons and upwards at the upper end of the system,
which the caretaker can discharge four times daily, and oftener in the summer
months. Others have the same kind of tank, flushing a system of separate
closet pans with syphonic action opening into a common pipe. The excreta
then falls through a trapped pipe into an adjacent inspection-chamber, and so
to the road sewer. In all these cases there is a man-hole chamber at the end
of the main drain with a fresh-air inlet, and an intercepting trap with raking
arm between the chamber and the road sewer.
Urinals. In some of the older schools, sparge pipes are still fixed; but
now, in all cases, flushing three or four times daily from a length of hose is
relied on to give the stalls, floors and channels a cleansing much more thorough
than can be obtained by a sparge pipe sprinkling down the front of the stalls.
Water Supply comes in all cases from the Metropolitan Water Board.
In 1906, I advised the Education Committee that the drinking fountains in all
the schools should be taken directly off the main; but this has only been done
at Silver Street and St. James's Schools.
It has been difficult in the past to secure thorough cleansing of the cups
attached to the drinking fountains, so that now the use of cups has been
abolished altogether, and as opportunity serves the taps are all being set in an
inverted position, so that the stream rises upwards into the scholar's mouth,
and the back-wash, as it falls into the basin, keeps the mouth of the tap clean.
One has to remember that the scholars who are most inclined to use the
drinking fountains are those who are suffering from a febrile condition, possibly
a forerunner of diphtheria, or some other infectious disease.