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voluntary agencies for the provision of meals for children
at Public Elementary Schools, and to report whether relief
of this character could be better organised, without any
charge upon public funds, both generally and with special
regard to children who, though not defective, are from malnutrition
below the normal standard."
This Committee reported on the 9th November, 1905.
On the 21st December, 1906, the Education (Provision
of Meals) Act, 1906, was passed, and this Act has been
made use of in the area administered by the Willesden
Education Authority up to the present time. In the same
year proposals for the Medical Inspection of School
Children were placed before Parliament in the Education
Bill of 1906, but these were abandoned on the withdrawal
of the Bill as a whole. The proposals regarding Medical
Inspection, however, re-appeared in the Education (Administrative
Provisions) Act, 1907, and duly came into operation
on the 1st January, 1908.
From the foregoing review it will be seen that in the
minds of the legislature there has been the closest possible
connection between the Medical Inspection and the Feeding
of School Children, and so far as the Central Department
of Education is concerned this policy is adopted and advocated,
as described in the following extract from the Annual
Report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education
of 1910:—
“. . . The Board of Education attach much importance
to the close association of the administration of this
Act with the School Medical Service, whether central or
local, and, so far as relates to their own administrative
action, they have placed the general supervision of this
branch of their work in the hands of their Medical Department"
During the year 1914 provision was made by Parlia
ment for grants-in-aid of the Provision of Meals for Children