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173
Report of the County Medical Officer—Education.
There was a steady increase in the stature and weight of the children.

The dispensary authorities have provided free dinners and other assistance incases of extreme
poverty, and every effort has been made to ensure that children leaving the school shall proceed to
suitable occupations.
Playground classes.
Playground classes have now been held for five years in connection with the elementary school
maintained by the Council. The various types of classes are as follows:—
Type A.—A class held at a centre and composed of specially delicate children drawn from
neighbouring schools, the same class working in the open-air all the summer.
Type B.—A class in which the children are specially selected from various standards in one
school, the same children being in the class for the whole period.
Type C.—A class in which the pupils are drawn from a particular school only, but are all in
one class, the same class working in the open-air during the whole of the summer.
Type D.—A class in which the pupils are drawn from a particular school only, and various
classes are taken out in turn into the open.
There were 4 classes of type A, 1 of type B, 61 of type C, and 39 of type D.
Considerable attention was paid by the school doctors to the oversight of the health of the
children in the first three types of classes but it was considered unnecessary to pay special attention
to classes of type D. The results of the majority of the classes of types A, B and C, from the point
of view of improvement in the health and physique of the children were good, but there were some
notable exceptions to the rule, and even where the results were good they might still have been better
in some instances if there had been more concerted action between the doctors and the care committees
in the case of ailing aud debilitated children. Particularly was this the case in the type A classes,
where difficulty in obtaining regular following-up of the defective children was experienced largely
owing to the fact that those coming from contributory schools where removed from the observation of
their own care committees. Another obstacle to the improvement in the condition of the children was
the unsatisfactory and unsuitable character of many of the shelters in the playgrounds under which
the desks were placed, and in which a considerable portion of the time of the classes was spent. Some
of the older shelters, though solidly and expensively built, are quite unsuitable for class purposes;
they are dark and ill-ventilated, become close and stuffy upon occupation, and they are in reality less
hygienic for class purposes and approximate less to open-air conditions than do the classrooms in the
school itself. In the erection of playground shelters in the future these points should be borne in mind,
as it should be practicable without added expenditure to ensure that the shelters should be suitable for
cla3s purposes in the summer months. Many interesting observations were made by the school doctors