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73
(g) Uncleanliness.—As in previous years, the heads of all
the girls attending the public elementary schools were inspected
three times in the year after the usual school holidays. Of the
28,695 examinations of children carried out in this way, 625
individual children were found to be in an uncleanly condition
and 257, or 0.9 per cent., were excluded. There were 58 children
with verminous heads and two with verminous bodies found at
the routine medical inspection in the schools and 50 found at special
inspection after being referred for examination by the headteachers.
The low percentage of exclusions shows that the policy
of routine inspections coupled with the exclusion of those with more
than a few nits in the head followed by the compelling of the parents
to clean the heads of the children and to keep them clean, with the
threat of a summons under the School Attendance Byelaws in the
background, is the best one. The plan of cleansing the children's
heads under Section 87 of the Education Act with the threat of
further action is never so effective. The table which follows
shows how clean the children have progressively become in the
course of the last eleven years.