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Improvement in personal hygiene continued in 1951. As parents are warned
in advance, the personal hygiene of pupils as shown by the result of routine inspection
is inevitably better than would be shown by surprise inspections, although it would
be difficult for parents to remove all traces of persistent neglect at very short notice.
Confirmation of this improvement is given by the percentage of verminous children
found at nurses' rota visits:—
Rota Visits
Total
number
of
inspections
Number
found
to be
verminous
Percentage found to be
verminous
1948 1949 1950 1951
Boys 478,648 6,589 2.1 1.9 1.7 1.4
Girls 515,541 21,113 6.4 6.1 5.0 4.1
Infants 537,229 11,797 3.9 3.4 2.7 2.2
Total 1,531,418 39,499 4.2 3.8 3.2 2.6
During the year the number of children found to be verminous at these
inspections as distinct from the number of occasions on which vermin was found
(in which one child might appear more than once) was 18,503 (22,159 in 1950, 22,063
in 1949 and 29,970 in 1948).
Children who attended a cleansing centre after the issue of advice cards numbered
16,938 (20,269 in 1950) and the number of advice cards issued during the year was
25,177 compared with 29,305 in 1950. The number of statutory notices served was
3,848 (4,759); 1,084 (1,405) of the children concerned attended voluntarily and
2,089 (2,567) were cleansed compulsorily.
Only 7 of 170,880 pupils inspected at routine medical inspections had body
vermin.
Vaccination
The upward trend in the proportion of pupils vaccinated against smallpox noted
in the past four years was interrupted, the percentage falling from 56.5 per cent. in
1950 to 55.8 per cent. in 1951.
Diphtheria
immunisation
Pupils stated to have been immunised against diphtheria formed 85.5 per cent.
of those seen at routine inspections in 1951; 85.9 per cent. in 1950, 84.4 per cent.
in 1949 and 83.1 per cent. in 1948.
Dental
standard

Although these figures do not provide as reliable an index as the more exacting
inspections by school dental surgeons, they can be used for comparative purposes.
For entrants and seven and eleven year old groups, the percentages of children with