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48
Closing of
Public
Elementary
Schools.
A memorandum, prepared in the Medical Department
of the Local Government Board on the circumstances
under which the closing of Public Elementary
Schools or the exclusion therefrom of particular children may be
required in order to prevent the spread of disease was issued
in July, 1897.
This gives information derived from the reports of the
Board's own Medical Inspectors, and of local Medical Officers of
Health, respecting school closure and exclusion from schools as
precautions against infection, with a view to indicating the best
means of preventing the spread of disease by school children,
while avoiding any unnecessary interruption of the work of
education.
The regulations of the Education Department (Art. 88)
prescribe, as one of the general conditions required to be fulfilled
by a Public Elementary School in order to obtain the grant,
that the managers must at once comply with any notice of the
Sanitary Authority, acting on the advice of the Medical Officer
of Health, requiring them for a specified time, with a view to
preventing the spread of disease, or any danger to health likely
to arise from the condition of the school, either to close the
school, or to exclude any scholars from attendance, but provides
for their appeal to the Department, after complying, if they
consider the notice unreasonable.
It has subsequently been found necessary to make use of
this provision for the closing of the Infants' department of the
Plough Road school. It has generally been found so far sufficient
to exclude scholars from infected houses from attendance for
that purpose, daily returns being forwarded to the Head Masters
of Schools notifying the existence of infectious disease at the
residences of scholars attending such schools.
Table XIII. illustrates the epidemic or zymotic mortality for
the past eleven years with the resulting death rates. The