View report page

PHYSICALLY HANDICAPPED PUPILS
Historical
Following the recommendation of a Royal Commission, the London School Board
in 1891 decided that special schools should be established for children who could not
be taught in the ordinary schools or by ordinary methods by reason of physical or
mental defect. A sub-committee was given the responsibility of providing special
education and its title was changed to the Special Schools Sub-Committee. Combined
centres for children with mental and physical defects were set up in 1892. A departmental
committee of the Education Department recommended in 1898 that children with
physical defects should be admitted to special classes if they were incapable of benefiting
from instruction in the ordinary schools. The Board's medical officer and the superintendent
had to certify that each child required special treatment. The Elementary
Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act, 1899, imposed a duty upon the
parent of having a defective or epileptic child educated in a special class or school
where such a class or school was within reach of the child's residence. In 1900 a committee
of members of the School Board and specialists reported in favour of setting up special
schools for the physically defective of normal intelligence. The School Board accepted
this proposal which was approved by the Board of Education.
From a few hundred places the accommodation increased steadily to 3,500 places
by 1915, and 4,000 places in the middle 1920's. Since then there has been a marked fall,
and today the Council provides 1,350 places in 16 special schools, three of which arc
boarding schools.
Children in London special schools
' Physically handicapped' pupils are defined by the 1953 Regulations as ' pupils not
suffering solely from a defect of sight or hearing who by reason of disease or crippling
defect cannot, without detriment to their health or educational development, be satisfactorily
educated under the normal regime of ordinary schools'. This definition
obviously covers a wide range of degrees and types of handicap, and Table (i) gives an
analysis (based on the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Injuries and
Causes of Death) of the pathological conditions of the children in London special schools
for the physically handicapped in the Spring Term of 1957.
In essence, Table (i) shows that, apart from large categories such as cerebral palsy
and poliomyelitis, the children attending the special schools for the physically handicapped
are suffering from a very wide range of conditions, some of which in this survey
occur only once. It is important to note that the figures given in Table (i) which relate
only to those children in special schools for the physically handicapped, cannot therefore
be used to measure the incidence of any particular condition amongst the child population,
since there are many handicapped children satisfactorily placed in ordinary schools,
and there are others who are in schools not maintained by the Council, or who are not
in school at all. On the other hand the figures are of importance as a measure of the need
for special educational provision.
124