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63
Interruption of Education at Elementary Schools
arising from the prevalence of infectious diseases.- It
is the practice at Board and other elementary schools to
refuse admission to children living in houses where infectious
disease is known to exist, even when the rejected children are
not members of the family affected. The propriety of this
practice is beyond question, and to its existence we may reasonably
ascribe the rarity of the occasions on which it has been
found necessary to close schools on account of the prevalence of
infectious disease among the pupils. The "notification of infectious
disease," when it shall have been obtained by legislation,
and the increased powers of removal to hospitals of non-isolated
cases of infectious sickness, for which Sanitarians are asking as a
correlative measure, will probably have the desired effect of still
further limiting the occasions on which it will become necessary
to close schools on account of epidemics, e.g., of scarlet fever.
Sanitary authorities, nevertheless, acting through their Medical
Officers, should have greater power than they now possess of
closing schools. It has been my constant endeavour to work with
and obtain the assistance of school teachers, and this plan has
often been attended with excellent results. The regrettable fact
connected with the existence of infectious diseases, in relation to
education, is the length of time during which children in health,
but living in infected houses, may be kept away from school to the
curtailment of the short period devoted to education, and yet at the
same time may be meeting their school fellows at play, thus to a
certain extent neutralizing the precautions taken at school. It is
obvious that fresh and even stringent legislation is needed to
enable us to cope with this difficulty, viz., for the compulsory removal
of the sick when necessary to secure isolation. The School
Board for London is alive to the importance of the matter, having
appointed two of their members to confer thereon with the
Society of Medical Officers of Health, whose report on a series
of questions submitted by the delegates of the School Board, was
given in my last Annual Report (page 43).