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from the alteration of the promotion age from 13 to 11 years. It
is not expected that the additional accommodation will be available
until late in the educational year 1957-58 or early in 1958-59.
Further Education.
The Kent Education Committee are now considering plans for
the first instalment of the Regional College of Technology to be
erected on the Rookery site. Bromley Common.
It is proposed to begin with the erection of the first instalment
in the course of the financial year 1956-57. This does not affect,
at this stage, the existing College of Art.
Details of the number of pupils to be accommodated in the first
instalment are not yet available.
SPECIAL EXAMINATIONS.
In addition to the periodic medical inspections, a further 1.492
cases came under medical supervision during 1955, involving 1,944
medical examinations. (Figures for 1954 were 1,414 cases and 1,932
examinations.)
54 cases requiring special investigation were examined at the
Municipal Offices, and of these 31 had their intelligence quotients
investigated—a task of no small magnitude in itself.
141 cases were referred to the various hospitals for specialists'
advice and treatment, of which 86 were ear, nose and throat cases.
AUDIOMETRY.
A programme of hearing tests, using the pure tone audiometer,
was inaugurated during the autumn term, and has now become an
established feature of the School Health Service in Bromley.
This scheme aims to ensure the recognition of children with
defects of hearing, which, though often not amounting to obvious
deafness, can, if unnoticed, substantially handicap the child during
his or her school career. There are two main aspects to the work,
namely, preliminary "screening" tests at the schools for the discovery
of children with hearing defects and the subsequent
individual examination and treatment of these children, to which a
considerable proportion of the time available is devoted.
With the type of audiometer used, the initial screening test,
although simple enough to enable a child to co-operate fully, will
detect any significant impairment of hearing over the range of tones
used in normal speech. The test can be carried out rapidly and
although each child is examined individually, and each ear is tested
separately, substantial numbers, such as a complete class can be
examined at a single session.