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school ; while literary work was taught in the blind school, and included such part
of the 3-Rs as required the use of script and writing materials. The success which
attended this scheme of special education for the partially-sighted led the Council to
extend it to other districts, and in 1911 the Council received sanction from the Board of
Education to establish special classes for an additional hundred partially-sighted children.
In applying for sanction the Council expressed the opinion that classes for these children
should be held either in or in close proximity to the elementary school premises, as it
was essential that the oral work should be taken with the fully-sighted children. The
Council pointed out that this arrangement would have the further advantage of
rendering less likely the impression, which might otherwise be created, that the myopic
child, although ' educationally blind ', was a blind child. By this proposal the Council
showed that it had definitely adopted the policy of educating the partially-sighted child
as a sighted and not as a blind child. The initiation and development of this system of
special education for partially-sighted children in London, which gave the lead to the
whole country, was due to Dr. Kerr and Mr. Harman.
Under Section 69 of the Education Act, 1921, the expression 'blind' still meant
'too blind to be able to read the ordinary school books used by children', so that
partially-sighted children still came within the educational definition of blindness.
However, the Handicapped Pupils and School Health Service Regulations, 1945,
included the new category of 'partially-sighted pupils' among the list of handicapped
children requiring special education treatment.
In London the selection of pupils needing education in schools for the partiallysighted
is based on visual acuity and capability. It thus differs from the criteria used
originally for many of the schools, to which myopic children were admitted in the
belief that easy educational methods controlled the progress of myopia in a child. The
partially-sighted school serves the child whose corrected vision is 6/18 or less, for such
a child cannot usually follow the ordinary curriculum without detriment to his educational
development. If the vision is 6/60 or less, the child cannot, as a rule, be educated
by sighted methods, and requires admission to the blind school.
Co-operation between the teachers responsible for the education of the borderline
case and the ophthalmologist is very necessary if the child is to be properly placed and
given the best chance ; in some cases the opinion of a psychiatrist has to be sought
before a final decision is possible. The tendency is to keep the child in the ordinary
school as long as he is making satisfactory progress, and, similarly, at the other end of
the scale, education should be by sighted methods so long as the child is able to profit
by them. This applies to cases of retinitis pigmentosa, progressive macular dystrophy
and some cases of buphthalmia.
With the change in views there has been a considerable fall in the number of myopic
pupils attending London partially-sighted schools. In 1953, of the 450 pupils attending
the six London schools, 43 per cent. were myopic, with degenerative or other changes,
15 per cent. were aphakic, 12 per cent. had nystagmus, and 8 per cent. were albinos ;
only 3 per cent. were defective from the result of inflammatory diseases, and the
remainder were divided among a miscellany of other congenital and hereditary defects,
optic atrophy of known and unknown origin.
It is to be expected that the number of myopics will diminish still further in the future
and that retrolental fibroplasia will provide a small increase, though regrettably most
of these are likely to be of blind standard. On the whole there is a slow but steady
proportionate increase in the number of pupils suffering from congenital defects of
various kinds.
A partially-sighted school should consist of 5 or more classes, each of 15 pupils,
and catering for the appropriate age-groups. The methods of teaching, especially for
the older pupils, have undergone much change in recent years. They no longer have the
aim of saving sight, but seek to provide as full an education as possible within the
limits of the visual capabilities of the child, regulating close work by interspersing oral
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