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151
St.Philip's School for Educationally Subnormal Children,
Fleetwood House. Leatherhead Road. Chessington
Thanks are expressed to Mr.J.A.Ainley, Headmaster, for the
following report:
The number of children on roll has increased to 243, in spite
of a gradual decrease in children coming from other authorities. This
is not due so much to an increase in backwardness in the area a3 to
earlier recognition by health visitors, clinicsj, doctors and psychologist,
together with their recommendation that the children need special
education. As a result many of our children are now admitted at
five years, and there is then a better prospect that they will, by
the end of school life, have higher attainments, be better adjusted,
and better able to live a normal life, although of course the level
of measured intelligence will not usually change very much. As a result
of increased numbers an additional full time teacher has been approved.
A new development at the school is a unit for eight children
who have additional handicaps which can broadly be described as perceptual
difficulties. The aim is to see how far these children can be helped,
by experimentally reducing the normal classroom stimulation to perhaps
one sensory channel (e.g. by the use of cubicles) and by specific sense
and motor skill training programmes, based on the work of Frostig and
Kephart. In the long term these children are the most severely handicapped,
since they are the poorest in manual skills when the time comes
for employment, and they do not have the intelligence or attainment,
within the school's range, for other kinds of work.
"types of employment in which success has been achieved:
Labourer
Factory Hand
Canteen Assistant
Sales Assistant
Caterer
Fencing Panel Maker