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1891, the School Management Committee of the London School Board decided that the
Sub-Committee on the Blind and Deaf should also undertake the provision of special
instruction for mentally and physically defective children. The name of the subcommittee
was altered to the 'Special Schools Sub-Committee Combined centres for
mentally and physically defective children were first set up by the School Board in 1892,
at which time there were no statutory arrangements governing the conduct of the classes.
In 1898 the Medical Officer of that day was directed to supervise the classes and in the
following year two part-time assistants were given the task of visiting the schools and
examining entrants.
The Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act 1899, gave powers
to school boards to maintain special schools for mentally and physically defective
children from the age of 7 to 16 and laid down that, where this was done, medical
officers were required to certify the children. The medical work in the Board's schools
of this type (which had, until then, been on a 'voluntary' basis) was thus placed on a
statutory basis. The selection of children for these schools was made jointly by a medical
officer and the superintendent of schools for the physically and mentally defective (or an
assistant) who accompanied the medical officer at his examination. So far as can now be
judged from the records, some children were admitted and remained on trial for long
periods who would now probably be considered imbecile, while there were others who
would now probably be regarded as merely dull.
At that time, the schools for the mentally defective were 'schools of recovery' and
the term 'mental defect' had not its later connotation suggestive of a need for permanent
care, supervision and control. Gradually, in the years up to 1909, various tests of
intelligence and capacity were being attempted, but there was no established scale and
each of the medical officers was making his own separate experiments and investigations.
About 1912, Binet scales became part of the recognised procedure of ascertainment.
If, in the early days of the 1899 Act, it became necessary to enforce attendance,
proceedings were taken before a Court whose decision on the facts was final. A decision
of the High Court, however, based on the Elementary Education (Administrative
Provisions) Act, 1909 (Section 6) was that a magistrate was bound to act on the certificate,
signed by a duly qualified practitioner approved by the Board of Education, to the
effect that the child was defective. Later the position changed somewhat; by the
Education Act, 1921, it was laid down that in a case of doubt the matter should be
determined by the Board of Education.
The Education Act, 1921, defined mentally defective children as those who were
incapable, on account of their mental defect, of receiving 'proper benefit from the
instruction in the ordinary public elementary schools; but not incapable by reason of
such defect of receiving benefit from instruction in special schools.' Under this Act the
schools for mentally defective children had to provide for children between the ages
of 5 and 16 years.
Under the Education Act, 1944, the certification of children as mentally defective
was abolished and it became the duty of every local education authority to ascertain
which children in their area required special educational treatment. One of the categories
into which these children were divided by the Handicapped Pupils and School Health
Service Regulations (1945) was ' educationally sub-normal pupils'.
The Education Act, 1944, also required the local education authority to determine
which children in their area were suffering from a disability of mind of such a nature or
to such an extent as to make them incapable of receiving education at school, with a view
to such children being referred for necessary action by the local authority under the
Mental Deficiency Acts. Similar provision was made for ensuring that such children
in attendance at a special school and suffering from a disability of mind should if necessary,
receive supervision after leaving the special school.
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