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(e) Review of 1946—By the time of the next general review, in 1946, the position had
materially changed. The Education Act, 1944 had come into operation; the work of the
problem case conferences had established the needs; the report of the Committee of the
Association of Education Committees had been issued. Accordingly it was decided that
the post of educational psychologist be converted into a full-time one, that steps be taken
to fill the vacancy, and that the duties should include:
(i) assisting teachers to carry out and interpret the results of mental and scholastic
tests,
(ii) advising generally on the psychological aspects of education especially for subnormal
and other handicapped children and for exceptionally able children,
(iii) giving advice on the problems of selecting pupils for different kinds of secondary
education,
(iv) co-operating with divisional case conferences,
(v) assisting in the running of special classes for problem and maladjusted children,
(vi) furnishing psychological reports on individual pupils as required.
The vacancy was filled in 1947.
(f) Developments after 1947—In 1949 the Education Committee considered the future
development of the school psychological service in the light of the fact that the Council
was maintaining its own child guidance units. It was considered that educational psychologists
attached to the child guidance units should also work for part of their time in the
school psychological service. (This conclusion was later reinforced by one of the recommendations
of the Underwood Committee accepted by the Ministry of Education in
Circular 347.) It was also considered that psychologists not attached to Council child
guidance units should undertake liaison work with the non-Council child guidance clinics,
since the clinical psychologists working for the hospital clinics were not in a position to
work on the 'school' side. This has not been possible, except that in 1950 one of the
Council's educational psychologists was attached part-time to St. Alfege's hospital child
guidance clinic.
Apart from the increase arising from the opening of child guidance units, two other
educational psychologists were appointed in 1950, two in 1957 and by 1959 there were a
total of 13, including one senior position. In addition psychologists were employed at
specific schools, such as Anerley boarding special school (see page 151).
(g) Backwardness—In his classic work, 'The Distribution and Relations of Educational
Abilities,' Sir Cyril Burt, to quote the words in its preface by Sir Robert Blair, then Education
Officer, "put an approximate measure (40,000) on a well known problem," i.e.
backwardness. Sir Cyril showed that intelligence, like other biometric attributes, followed
the same laws of statistical mathematics that Galton and Karl Pearson had earlier demonstrated
for other mensurables. Within a few years the publication by the Council of Burt's
'Mental and Scholastic Tests 'provided the tools with which an attempt could be made
to solve the problem with which the Wild Boy of Aveyron had confronted the French
Academicians 120 years before, i.e. was a child 'backward' because he was 'dull,' or
because he was 'retarded.'
The publication, some 20 years later, of the Report of a Committee of Inspectors on
Backwardness in Elementary Schools confirmed Burt's findings, restated the problem,
and placed the number of backward pupils at 35,000.
In 1946 in Ministry of Education pamphlet No. 5 on special education treatment, it was
suggested that the category of 'educationally sub-normal' was so defined that it covered
10 per cent. of the school rolls, i.e. that 'backward' children should be dealt with as
educationally subnormal. However, as was explained in my report for 1958 (page 175),
this concept did not work out satisfactorily in practice, and proposals for the provision
of special classes for backward children in ordinary schools were abandoned in 1952.
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