View report page

38
Provision of Meals.
At the request of the Board of Education, this
matter received very earnest consideration in its application
to the necessitous under-nourished children in the
area. Taking under-nourishment in its widest sense, one
could find no concrete evidence that school children in
the necessitous grade were suffering from serious lack of
food. Much of the so-called under-nourishment and
malnutrition prevailing in the area appears to be largely
due to other factors and to unbalanced diet in the home.
This is often the case even where family means do not
fall within the necessitous grade. Our answer to undernourishment
in the past has been to seek the apparent
root cause rather than to advise the adoption of the easy
course of provision of free meals at school. Where real
lack of nourishing food through poverty has been discovered,
the cases have been referred to the Committee,
At the present time a nutrition survey is being completed,
from which it is hoped we shall be able to determine
whether the provision of free meals in normal time;
is a policy to be adopted in this area. The new factor
of war conditions has, however, created a category of
necessitous or partially necessitous children not hitherto
strictly existent in this area. The provision of school
meals has become desirable.
In the meantime the canteens for the provision of
hot mid-day meals are being continued at Hayes and
Keston Schools, and during 1939 these facilities also
became available to Raglan Road and Princes Plan
Council Schools.
The milk distribution scheme continues in operation.
The latest return shows that 2,823 children are receiving
milk in schools for payment at ½d. per one third pint
per day. This represents 53 per cent. of the total rollThere
is a marked disparity between numbers of Junior
and Infant scholars receiving milk and the Senior
scholars. Generally speaking, about 75 per cent to 30
per cent.