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71
Forms are supplied on which the parents indicate their willingness
to pay one penny a day for the supply of milk to each child. The
milk is delivered by the dairyman in capped bottles containing onethird
of a pint in the required number and a supply of straws is
provided. At the mid-morning interval the bottles are passed to the
children who perforate the cap on the bottle, insert the straw and
drink the milk. The empty bottles are collected by the dairyman.
There is very little labour entailed in distributing the milk and
in collecting the pennies and there are no receptacles to wash.
So well was the scheme accepted by the teachers that at the
end of the year there were 3,046 children receiving milk in this way
in school.
In previous years, when considering the school children who
appeared to be improperly or insufficiently fed, the difficulty in
supplying meals to them was felt to be so great, on account of
smallness of the numbers in different schools, that nothing was
done to meet their needs. The scheme of the National Milk
Publicity Council, however, offered a means of supplying those
necessitous children with a meal of milk. On a survey being made
of the children in needy circumstances who would be likely to
benefit from a supplementary addition to their diet it was found
that roughly 300 children came within that category. The Committee,
therefore, with the approval of the Board of Education,
decided to supply those children, free of charge to the parents,
with a daily milk meal similar to that received by the other children
whose parents can afford to pay for it. No distinction is made in
the distribution and those receiving milk free obtain it in the
same way as those paying.
Carefully controlled experiments, carried out both in England
and Scotland, in which a supplementary ration of milk has been
given to school children have shown a marked improvement in
height and weight and even in brightness in those receiving it. There
can be no doubt that milk given in this way will in many cases
supply constituents of food not supplied in the home in sufficient
quantity and will make an otherwise deficient diet into a satisfactory
one. For these reasons the supply of milk to children in
school each day as a routine practice deserves every encouragement.