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is an enormous help in assessing the need for recommending measures such as
special schooling or referral to the Child Guidance Clinic. I am grateful to the
Barking head teachers for so willingly giving me the opportunities to meet individual
teachers.
It is very good news that the facilities for remedial teaching in the area are
likely to be increased in the near future as it is proposed to set up a remedial
class at Monteagle Junior School.
The setting up of this class in addition to the existing remedial class at
Roding School which does such excellent work, will mean that remedial teaching
facilities will be available for children of Junior School age over a larger area of
the borough.
There will still be a small area at the west end of the borough in need of more
local facilities of this kind so I hope there will be further growth in the remedial
teaching service in the borough.
During the year I had two or three meetings with the Borough Education Officer,
Mr. Haselden, who was most encouraging in his attitude and kindly invited me
to attend a head teachers' meeting so that I had the valuable experience of meeting
the head teachers in a group and giving a short talk to them. In the talk I gave my
views on the need for specialised remedial teaching for children who are working
below their ability and suggested some alternative ways in which a local authority
can meet this need; full-time remedial classes in ordinary schools, a group of remedial
classes in self-contained premises and peripatetic teachers taking groups of
children part-time. In the ensuing discussion it was clear that the type of help
desired differed from school to school according to the type of learning problems
usually encountered in a particular area.
Soon after the talk a collection of books suitable for remedial teaching was
made available to any of the head teachers and class teachers the borough who
wished to see it. They were invited to attend the Ilford Child Guidance Clinic to
see the display of books and some interesting discussions and comments on the
books arose out of this, from those who attended.
I am still concerned at the predicament of a few Secondary schoolchildren who
are in great need of remedial teaching.
During the past two years I have been carrying out a survey of reading back
wardness in the Barking Secondary Schools in order to get an idea of the size of
the problem and to assess how many of the children with severe reading difficulties
could be expected to respond to intensive remedial teaching. In each Secondary
School visited one whole class was tested, namely the lowest stream of the
age group which entered the Secondary School in September 1960. The children
were given a non-verbal group intelligence test to get a rough assessment of
their ability from a test specifically chosen so that it did not involve any reading.
Then each child was given individually a word-reading test.
This survey is almost complete, one school has still to be visited. What has
emerged from those already visited is that in any one age group in the Secondary
School population of the borough, there are several children who can read so little
that most of the work of the Secondary School is beyond them and yet who have
the intelligence to learn if they can be given enough specialised help.
In any one class there may be as few as one, two or three of these children
whose educational needs are quite different from those of the rest of the class
because they have not acquired the basic skills to a sufficient extent to enable
them to cope with simple text books and written work.
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