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92
Open-air School.—Barking is fortunate as being at present
one of the few local Education Authorities who possess an openair
school, providing accommodation for 120 children. During
the year 114 children were on the register, whilst 56 children
were admitted and 31 children found on examination to have
sufficiently improved to permit of their return to ordinary school.
This school, which is under the same roof as the accommodation
for physically and mentally defectives, is supplied from routine
medical inspection, the Inspection Clinic and the Tiberculosis
Dispensary, and so comes to enact the part of a preventorium for
suitable cases of the school population which, generally speaking,
are made up of suspected or quiescent cases of tuberculosis,
malnutritional, debilitated, anaemic and rickety subjects, etc. The
general routine of the school consists of, apart from life under
open-air conditions to the fullest extent, an early lunch, dinner
at noon, and in certain cases chemical food and cod-liver oil, the
latter containing an anti-rachitic and growth-promoting vitamine,
Fat Soluble A, which is of great benefit to children suffering
from rickets and other allied conditions. Children are encouraged
to sleep after dinner, and, when weather permits, to do so in the
open air There is a nurse-attendant attached to the school, who
attends to minor injuries, besides caring for younger children in
their passage to and from school by ambulance. Weekly spray
baths are provided, whilst clogs and jerseys are available in the
colder months, no serious attempt being made to maintain any
particular temperature in the class rooms.
A defect exists in the present construction of the school,
which might later be remedied, namely, the provision of a glass
verandah roof, and the conversion of the present windows into
those of the casement, or French type, whereby the class rooms
could become at all times open-air rooms in the fullest sense of the
word.
PHYSICAL TRAINING.
The general scheme outlined in the report by the Organiser
of Physical Training dealing with minor postural defects, etc.,
published in my Annual Report for last year, has remained to
some extent in abeyance pending the completion of the scheme
bv the establishment of a Remedial Centre for more advanced