View report page

Arrangements for medical inspection in boarding schools are similar to those in
day schools. A visiting medical officer is available for emergency examination, and supervisory
visits are paid by doctors from County Hall. The Orthopaedic Surgeon also
visits these schools and a school nursing sister is in residence.
The size of classes is limited to 20 but for practical classes the maximum is normally 10.
It follows from the definition of physically handicapped children given in the Regulations
that the purpose of special schools for such children is to provide a physical environment
appropriate to their needs, an environment where their particular disabilities may
receive proper and continuous care and attention, where their education, academic and
practical, is conditioned by their physical and mental capacity, and where their emotional
development may find harmonious expression. In other words, the care, maintenance
(and where possible the restoration) of health, education and the development of
normality in outlook and behaviour, all form one integrative process in the schools for
the physically handicapped. Consequently, each school has a nursing sister on the staff,
special equipment, furniture and apparatus are provided to meet the needs of special
cases and physiotherapeutic treatment, remedial exercises and speech therapy are given
to those requiring them.
The teaching staff is specialised in its task; the curriculum is designed to fill in the
gaps caused by illness, to cover the full range of general and cultural subjects, and to
provide varied forms of practical work. The boys learn woodwork, metalwork, and
leatherwork; the girls learn dressmaking and receive secretarial training. The tempo
of work is slower than that in the ordinary schools.
Pupils may remain at school for a period after reaching the age of 16 years if they so
desire. Others, whose ability, progress and state of health justify such a course, may be
nominated for special courses at technical schools or polytechnics at an earlier age.
The Youth Employment Service tries to find suitable employment for all leavers and
keeps in touch with them afterwards. When employment is chosen, care is taken to
ensure that there is a minimum of travelling. For the majority, sedentary occupations
are found, the type of work depending on educational attainment and a very small
number work at home.
The number of physically handicapped children has declined in recent years. A
number show sufficient improvement to justify their transfer to the ordinary schools and
many such transfers take place at the age of 11 years. The number of physically handicapped
children needing provision is substantially less than was envisaged in the London
School Plan, in which provision was made for the building of new schools for such
children away from the centre of London.
Except at a few schools where more satisfactory arrangements prevail, children
at day schools for the physically handicapped whom a consultant recommends for
physiotherapy now go by ambulance between school and the hospital giving the treatment.
The loss of school time and the expenditure on the ambulance service would be
reduced, and a better service would be provided, by giving the physiotherapy at the
schools. A satisfactory scheme has been in operation experimentally at one school for
nearly three years and is in process of being extended to others. Under this scheme each
school has been linked with a hospital and receives regular visits from members of a
physiotherapist team acting under the direction of a specialist in physical medicine
at the hospital. Arrangements on these lines are at present being negotiated with
hospitals for the remaining day schools for the physically handicapped which have not
already an adequate service.
At the end of 1953, just over twenty per cent. of the children in London schools
for the physically handicapped were ' spastics Another 10-20 children were placed in
boarding schools maintained by other authorities or by voluntary societies and payment
in respect of these children is made by the Council.
209
o*