View report page

92
(b) Mentally defective children are dealt with at Faircross Special School and,
in certain cases, in residential schools, and children whose misfortune it is not to be able
to receive benefit from instruction in a special school or class under Section 56 of the
Education Act, 1921, are notified to the County Council. After notifying these children
to the County, we do not officially take any further action, but close co-operation is
maintained with the County and any help which we are able to give informally is placed
at the disposal of the County.
The County Council co-operate with a voluntary organisation in the care of these
defective children, and, whenever possible, we, also, have co-operated with this
organisation.
(c) At the end of 1933, there were 240 places in Faircross Special School. One
hundred were in the Open-Air Section for delicate children, 40 in the Physically
Defective Section, and 100 in the Mentally Defective Section. I am, however, to
advise you that subsequently, after discussions with the Board of Education, certain
adjustments have been carried out.
It seems to me that the time is ripe for general discussions on a national basis about
the future of these special schools.
The idea of keeping delicate children at open-air schools until the age of sixteen
years was undertaken, I believe, in the hope that, although the children have had an
interrupted school life, they might reasonably, by that time, attain approximately the
standard of an ordinary child of fourteen years. This idea is very good and works
out in practice, but, if ever any similar idea was entertained with regard to mentally
defective children, I can only say from my experience that it is the exceptions which
work out in practice. In practice it is becoming less and less common to send mentally
defective children into special schools unless they are at least two-and-a-half to three
years retarded at the age of ten years, or retarded pro rata at any other age, and I find
that such children have completed their mental expansion at quite an early age and that,
although they may add such experience as they are able to understand to their mental
equipment, they do not develop mentally much after ten to twelve years of age.
I sometimes doubt whether this form of education has realised the expectation of
those who embarked on it.