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121
BUSH HILL PARK. The rapid development of this northern
part of the district has necessitated an agreement with the Enfield Urban
District Council to provide accommodation for 81 scholars from this neighbourhood
at the nearest Enfield School, but there were 296 in attendance in
December. This agreement was sealed in October, 1906. No Edmonton
scholars under five years of age are now admitted.
BATHS. The elder children are taken from the Schools to learn
swimming once a week in the summer months. During the present winter,
1912-13, this wholesome practice has been continued as far as the boys
are concerned. Classes are also held to teach the boys life-saving.
During the year the boys made 22,218, and the girls 8,576
attendances.
Building1 Operations. Nothing has been done beyond the
ordinary repairs necessary to keep the buildings in good order. The
exterior of the schools at Raynham, Croyland, and Brettenham Roads
were painted during the summer vacation.
Closets are in some cases of the trough pattern, with a weir at the
lower end, and a tank of sixty gallons and upwards at the upper end of
the system, which the caretaker can discharge four times daily, and
oftener in the summer months. Others have the same kind of tank,
flushing a system of separate closet pans with syphonic action opening
into a common pipe. The excreta then fall through a trapped pipe into
an adjacent inspection-chamber, and so to the road sewer. In all these
cases there is a man-hole chamber at the end of the main drain with a
fre,sh-air inlet, and an intercepting trap with raking arm between the
chamber and the road sewer.
Urinals. In some of the older schools, sparge pipes are still
fixed; but now, in all cases, flushing three or four times daily from a
length of hose is relied on to give the stalls, floors, and channels a
cleansing much more thorough than can be obtained by a sparge pipe
sprinkling down the front of the stalls.
Water Supply comes in all cases from the Metropolitan Water
Board. In 1906, I advised the Education Committee that the drinking
fountains in all the schools should be taken directly off the main; but this
has only been done at Silver Street and St. James's Schools.
It has been difficult in the past to secure thorough cleansing of the
cups attached to the drinking fountains, so that now the use of cups has
been abolished altogether, and as opportunity serves the taps are all
being set in an inverted position, so that the stream rises upwards into
the scholar's mouth, and the back-wash, as it falls into the basin, keeps
the mouth of the tap clean. One has to remember that the scholars who