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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', 'sub-normal' or
'bad'. Since these are descriptions 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:
Sub-
Normal Percentages referred:
Year Excellent Normal and Bad 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
1954 57.6 40.4 2.0 1.0 0.8 1.8
Genera
Condition
Pupils receiving school meals, extra milk or vitamin capsules on the recommendation
of the school doctor are re-inspected each term. During 1954, the number of such
re-inspections was 64,909. The classification of general condition recorded at these
'nutrition' re-inspections, with comparable figures for 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
1954 13.0 70.1 16.9
School meals, milk and vitamin supplements
A return to the Ministry of Education for a typical day in October, 1954, showed that
207,051 pupils, 52.8 per cent. of the number in attendance, were provided with school
dinners ; of these, 18,995 received dinners free of charge.
On the same day 353,192 children had school milk. This, however, included milk
collected from school for children who were absent, so that consumption cannot
therefore be related to the number of children in attendance.
Vitamin 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 event, is Is. 3d. a term for a daily dose.
Between October, 1953, and October, 1954, the number of meals centres at which
schoolchildren dined rose from 932 to 960, the number of kitchens of all kinds producing
schools meals in October, 1954, being 595 (including 583 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 the following standards have been set:—
Minimum
Age group number of calories
(i) Under 7 years 500
(ii) 7 to 11 years 650
(iii) Over 11 years 800
Meals for children are planned to contain, as a minimum, 20 grammes of protein,
25 grammes of fat and 400 milligrammes of calcium. The diet of the children taking
meals was under the supervision of the Council's Honorary Nutritional Consultant,
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