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134
Since that time great changes have taken place in the condition*
under which children attend school, and during the same
period there iias taken place a very great increase in the scope and
functions of the school medical service—especially with regard to
the provision of facilities for treatment. The arrangements for
routine medical inspection, however, have remained unchanged
since 1908—a period of almost thirty years. Routine medical
inspection may be described briefly as a scheme of medical inspection
of each school child 011 three occasions during its school career for
the purpose of discovering defects, and recording these defects on
schedules and in statistical tables prescribed by the Board of
Education.
Whereas such a survey of the actual physical defects in school
children was of the greatest initial value in providing the Board of
Education and Local Education Authoritieswith the necessary information
on which to base schemes of medical treatment; it is questionable
whether the time devoted to routine medical inspection could not
be utiljsed to better advantage in the interests of the health and welfare
of the children now attending public elementary schools. The
statistical tables prescribed by the Board of Education are merely
a catalogue of existing defects and diseases, but they provide little
<>r no information regarding the state of health and physical fitness
of the children inspected. Nowadays the function of the school
medical service is not merely the ascertainment of defects, but the
much more important medical supervision of the health and fitness
of children attending school; and this latter object cannot be
attained by the routine inspection of individual children at intervals
of four years.
During recent years much more time has been devoted to the
re-inspection and following-up of defective children to ensure that
they are having and deriving benefit from the medical treatment
recommended on their behalf. The Leyton Education Authority's
comprehensive scheme of clinic medical services and the facilities
for medical treatment are now being utilised to such an extent that
routine medical inspection in schools occupies a much less important
position in the life of the individual scholar than it did formerly.
Instead of school medical officers referring children requiring
treatment to hospital out-patient departments, as was the custom
formerly, there is a very marked increase in the number of school
children referred by hospitals to the school clinics for special medical
treatment.