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53
THE SCHOOL MEDICAL SERVICE IN RELATION TO
PUBLIC HEALTH.
School Hygiene.
At the end of the year there were 18 public elementary schools,
embracing 33 departments, under the control of the Ealing Education
Authority. Coston's School, the new school intended to
meet the rapidly growing needs of Greenford, was opened in the
beginning of the year but it was almost immediately filled to the
maximum of its capacity. Stanhope School, which is now quickly
nearing completion, is urgently required. Stanhope School, as
stated in the Annual Report for 1928, is of the Derbyshire type and
marks a new departure in the architecture of schools in the Borough.
When the Grange School was constructed some years ago it
was felt that great progress was being made and that we should
have an open-air school which would be utilized as such to the
betterment of the health of the children. So many defects were
found in the arrangement of this school, both as regards comfort
and from the teaching aspect, that when a new school was constructed
at Greenford, Coston's School, it was not made to comply
with the requirements of an open-air school. Fortunately, the
Committee, when another new school was called for at Greenford,
again considered the open-air type and after reviewing the matter
very carefully decided to adopt the Derbyshire type, which is a
true open-air school and which has proved an unqualified success
in Derbyshire and in other parts of the country. Another school
of the same type is being erected to serve the northern part of
Greenford and proposals are being put forward for the erection of
a new school of the same type at Northolt and a department
of similar construction at the Grange School.
The Committee are certainly to be congratulated on the
decision to erect all these schools of the open-air type and in doing
so have initiated a policy which will have a far reaching effect on
the health of the children. In providing for the children in the
recently added and rapidly growing areas, the Education Committee,
by adopting, so to speak, the policy of “open-air schools
for all” has shown that it can take a very broad and very progressive
view of its duties.