View report page

20
provision is made the shower baths of one school may be used
as a centre available for other schools in the neighbourhood by
a careful adjustment of the time table. Moreover, the Committee
might well consider whether bathing facilities might not be afforded
out of school hours to that section of the public which stands
in need of some public provision of this kind. By so doing, the
scheme might be made partly self-supporting."
I wish to re-affirm the opinions expressed in this Report. I
can conceive no more important item in the equipment of the
school building than the school shower bath. The moral and
physical benefit of a systematic education in personal cleanliness
will rival among the poorer and dirtier of the children almost
any of the benefits which the present measure of their education
confers. I venture to hope that the Local Education Authority
will take the matter into consideration at an early date.
DEGREE OF UNIFORMITY ATTAINED IN MEDICAL
INSPECTION.
In the tables will be found summaries of the results of
medical inspection respectively of boys and of girls. For the most
part the same Medical Officer has not examined both girls and
boys, and a comparison of the percentage of defects found
under each heading of the Board's Schedule may thus
be taken as in some degree a measure of the uniformity of
standard to which the Assistant Medical Officers have as a whole
attained.
One item which I have abstracted from the medical inspection
cards, and in respect of which there can be no question of variation
due to differences of sex, is that of children giving a family
history of tuberculosis. In the case of boys, the recorded
observations of the Assistant School Medical Officers in which this
history was elicited amount to 2.6 per cent, of all the bovs
examined, in the case or girls 2.8 per cent. This figure is certainly
low, and it may be objected as a measure of the standard of