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SCHOOL DENTAL SERVICE
ANNUAL REPORT OF THE PRINCIPAL SCHOOL DENTAL OFFICER 1967
The Draft Model Scheme for the School Dental Service as published in Appendix C of the
Health of the School Child 1962/63 states that:
"The duty of the School Dental Service is to make available dental treatment for all children attending maintained schools or otherwise the responsibility of the local education authority.
The aim of the Service is to ensure that as far as possible, through dental care, children shall
leave school free from dental disease and irregularity, with an understanding of the importance of
good natural teeth and zealous in looking after them.
The Service should be designed for routine inspections in schools, routine and emergency
treatment in clinics and dental health education in both.*
The very difficult problem facing the Service in the London Borough of Hammersmith, the
responsibility for which rests with the Inner London Education Authority, is obvious when one
considers that in 1966 only 23% of children on the school roll were inspected. Of these only 6.7%
were inspected in school; and 68.9% of all children inspected were found to be in need of treatment
School Dental Inspections
Mention was made in the Annual Report on the Dental Services, 1966, that routine annual
school dental inspections were experimentally abolished in Divisions 1 and 9 of the former London
County Council in the early Summer of 1962. A revised scheme based on this experiment but preserving one inspection on entry to school was introduced throughout the Inner London Area in the
Spring of 1965, so that no routine annual dental inspections, other than of new entrants during
1965/66, were conducted in Hammersmith after 1962.
The Inner London Education Authority reinstituted routine school dental inspections in the
Autumn term of 1966 and it was my initial duty on taking up my appointment on 1st May, 1967, to
re-establish this practice in Hammersmith, together with a service capable of providing for the
greatly increased demand for treatment that would undoubtedly befall it.
It was decided to concentrate the efforts of the service on the infant and junior school
populations. Without exception the Dental staff have enjoyed the fullest co-operation of Head
teachers, all of whom had a very real concern for the total well-being of the children under their
care, and recognised the need to re-introduce annual inspections at school.
It will be seen that some 6,168 children were actually inspected. This represents 23.3% of
the school roll and a further 3,469 (13.1%) received a first inspection at a clinic. 62% of all children
inspected were found to be in need of treatment, though there was a great variation from school
to school, and area to area within the Borough, reflecting both varying socio-economic conditions
and the level of dental care that has been available to these children. Of the 38% passed dentally
fit, especially among the older children in the infant schools, a large proportion were without any
teeth capable of benefiting from further treatment. Many had had most of their deciduous molars extracted; these children will, to a great extent, be the orthodontic problems of tomorrow. A very low
percentage only were seen with perfectly sound teeth, and indeed three pupils in infant schools
were in possession of full dentures.
Another interesting but disturbing fact that has emerged from these inspections, and one
that requires further research, is that by the age of 11 years, between 20% and 25% of children have
had an accident to their permanent incisor teeth resulting in a fracture of some portion of the crown;
this does not take into account the countless other children who have sustained accidents, not
resulting in visible damage to the hard tissues, but from which ultimate death of the pulp may
follow.
Treatment
School dental inspections were programmed to the ability of being able to provide any necessary treatment without undue delay. The response by parents was very gratifying, and an overall
acceptance rate of 45.2% leaves room for improvement but at the same time is very encouraging. Jr.
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