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189
Other Medical Examinations
The following examinations were carried out by Medical
Officers during the year:—-
Training College candidates 398
Teachers (including two for other authorities) 78
Total 476
1 am grateful to Mr. D. R. Barraclough, Chief Education
Officer, for the following reports on Physical Education, and the
School Milk Meals Services:—
Physical Education
During the last five years there has been a steady programme
of installing trampolines in all secondary schools. By 1971, all
secondary schools will be in possession of this valuable piece of
equipment. It is the first piece of apparatus other than the water
in a swimming bath which allows a big overweight person to
work equally as well as the more athletically built youngster.
In the primary schools a similar programme of gradual
supply of indoor climbing equipment has resulted in a quarter of
the junior schools possessing this apparatus. This equipment
enables these schools to carry on with adventurous gymnastic
lessons indoors throughout the inclement season. From the point
of cost efficiency it is a much better proposition than the outdoor
equipment which lies unused because of rain and cold for long
periods of the year.
Many of the junior schools have considered the ability to
swim as so important that they have collected fairly large sums
of money to build their own learner swimming pools. About a
quarter of the junior schools already possess their own pool and
as a result they are successful in teaching almost all school leavers
to swim 20 yards or more. Children at schools without learner
pools receive ten swimming lessons at the public baths in their
final junior year.
Consideration is being given to supplying all-weather training
surfaces instead of the more traditional grass areas. These
fine "granite chippings" surfaces are invaluable for games that
are played throughout the two hundred days of a school year. A
single grass pitch can be used for seven games a week and even
this cannot be allowed in wet weather whereas an all-weather
surface can be used twelve hours a day throughout the year without
any deterioration. When combined with floodlighting, these
future pitches could be a boon to the young adults of Bromley.
One such pitch near Kennington Oval has served the community
there for over thirty years.