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104
Table VI. Uncleanliness and Verminous Conditions.
The school nurses visit each school and examine every
child for cleanliness each term. Table VI. in the appendix
gives the total number of examinations of children for the
year as 14,663. The total number of individual children
found unclean was 455, and in only five cases was itnecessary
to resort to action under the School Attendance
Byelaws. It is nowadays only necessary to take extreme
measures with the few "hardened offenders" remaining.
That we have not yet eliminated verminous conditions
from the schools is principally due to these hardened
offenders and the careless parent who are so stubborn in
not taking steps to rid their children's heads of vermin.
Our aim has always been to maintain a high standard of
cleanliness, and thus there is recorded in the above figure,
455, many children with but one or two nits only.
Blind, Deaf, Defective and Epileptic Children.
Table III. (page 115) in the appendix gives a tabulation
of these children specially certified by the School
Medical Officer as requiring special education or special
medical supervision. The education of these children
means a heavy burden on the cost of the School
Medical Service. One hundred and seven children came
under supervision and classification for these special
defects, 31 of them being maintained at residential schools
or institutions, and 11 of these being at special day schools.
The details given in Table III. do not call for further
elaboration.
Physical Training.
This subject again came under the consideration of
the Education Committee during the year, and a scheme
for the appointment of physical training organisers for the
combined areas of Bromley, lieckenham, Penge, Erith
and Gravesend is at the present time receiving attention.
When this scheme is finally put into operation, together
with the extension of playing fields, it will fulfil the long
standing needs of the child in attendance at our elementary
school. I hope in the report for 1936 to be in a position
to discuss more fully the effects of the scheme.