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102
General condition
School doctors carrying out general medical inspections have since 1947, in accordance
with Ministry of Education requirements, classified the 'general condition' of the
pupils on a 3-point scale, 'Good', 'Fair' or 'Poor'. This replaced a 4-point scale
for recording the doctor's assessment of 'nutrition' as 'excellent', 'normal', 'subnormal'
or 'bad'. Since all these descriptions are of purely subjective assessments it is
obvious that such a change in the system of classification meant that it would be some
years before the statistics of assessment on the new scale could be regarded as stable
enough to enable significant conclusions to be drawn from year to year comparisons :
Year Excellent Normal
SubNormal
and Bad
Percentage referred:
Treatment
Observation
Total
1946 18.0 76.4 5.6 1.3 0.7 2.0
Good Fair Poor
1948 40.8 56.0 3.2 1.0 0.5 1.5
1950 46.3 50.9 2.8 1.0 0.7 1.7
1952 50.5 47.1 2.4 0.9 0.8 1.7
1953 53.3 44.3 2.4 1.1 0.8 1.9
Pupils receiving school meals, extra milk or halibut liver oil capsules on the recommendation
of the school doctor are re-inspected each term. During 1953, the number
of such re-inspections was 62,708. The classification of general condition recorded at
these 'nutrition' re-inspections, with comparable figures for the two previous years,
was as follows :
Good Fair Poor
1951 10.5 65.5 24.0
1952 10.7 68.0 21.3
1953 12.3 69.4 18.3
School meals, milk and vitamin supplements
A return to the Ministry of Education for a typical day in October, 1953, showed that
198,478 pupils, 51.2 of the number in attendance, were provided with school dinners;
of these 18,924 received dinners free of charge.
On the same day 350,627 children took school milk. This, however, included milk
collected from school for children who were absent, so that the consumption cannot,
therefore, be related to the number of children in attendance.
Halibut liver oil capsules are supplied to pupils either on the recommendation of
the school doctor, in which case no charge is made, or at the request of and on payment
by the parents. The charge, in the latter case, is ½d. a dose of two capsules, with a
maximum charge of 2d. in one week. Approximately, 1,100 schools take part in the
scheme. It is estimated that in 1953 some 5,000,000 doses were supplied on payment,
and another 3,500,000 doses were supplied free of charge.
Between October, 1952, and October, 1953, the number of centres at which school
children dined rose from 911 to 932; the number of kitchens of all kinds producing
school meals in October, 1953, being 599 (including 573 school and central kitchens).
The school meals service aims at concentrating the maximum food value into the
quantity of food a child is willing to eat, and has set the following standards:
Age group Number of calories
(i) Under 7 years minimum of 500
(ii) 7 to 11 years „ „ 650
(iii) over 11 years „ „ 800
Meals for children are planned to contain a minimum of 20 grammes of first-class
protein; a minimum of 25 grammes of fat and a minimum of 400 milligrammes of
calcium. The diet of the children taking meals was under the supervision of the Council's
honorary nutritional consultant, Dr. T. S. Macrae, O.B.E., D.Sc. To provide a check