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83
F.—REPORT TO THE EDUCATION COMMITTEE:.
I beg leave to present the following report, for the year (908, oil
the work carried out by the staff of the Public Health Department,
in connection with the Public Elementary Schools of the Borough.
Though this is the fifth Annual Report which I have submitted
to the Committee, this is the first occasion on which Local
Education Authorities have been required to furnish the Board of
Education with a report from the School Medical Officer.
To comply with this requirement I have followed as closely as
possible the suggestions as to Annual Reports contained in Circular
596 of the Board of Education. It is, however, impracticable to
deal fully with anything like all the topics concerning which the
Board desire information. Several years must elapse before the
whole field can be covered, and further preliminary spade work
must be done before the full benefits of the Medical Inspection
Clauses of the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907,
become apparent. Though this Act became operative in January,
1908, it was not until April that the additional staff appointed by
the Council became available, and much time during the past year
has been spent on preliminary details of organization, and on the
adaptation of the office staff to the new conditions of work. It
should therefore be borne in mind that many of the conclusions
which I have reached are of a tentative and provisional character.
I do not, however, propose to make any recommendation,
except in respect to those matters of which we already possess a
sufficiently large experience, which is unlikely to be fundamentally
modified by subsequent events.
Several matters which have already been considered by the
Committee, such, for instance, as the local organisation, are
included in this report, in accordance with the suggestion of the
Board of Education that the School Medical Officer should include
in his report "statements of local circumstances and conditions
"which would be superfluous if they were intended only for the
" information of the local authority."