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26.
THE WALTHAMSTOW SPECIAL CLASSES
AN EXPERIMENT IN REMEDIAL EDUCATION
THE NEED
Throughout the country there is a shortage of Special
School places for children who are mentally or emotionally
retarded, and in Walthamstow the disparity between places
available (at the Margaret Brearley School) and the number of
children found to need such special help has increased
steadily during the past few years. Because of the long
waiting list (approximately 40 for a 100 place school) prior
ities had to be determined by the School Medical Officer in
consultation with the Educational Psychologist and Head Teacher
to fill the few vacancies which arose each term. Consideration
had to be divided between the need on the one hand to offer
early admission to the worst cases, the relatively low grade
children, who would be utterly out of place in a normal school,
and on the other, to admit for remedial treatment those
children who would benefit most and, after a year or two of
carefully graduated study, be fit to return and hold their
own in a normal school. Consequently we had the depressing
task once or twice each term, of combing through the waiting
list to select those children whom we considered to have the
highest priority, to fill the half dozen vacancies. Those
assessed at lower priority were put off for consideration the
next term, and some spent several years on the waiting list
until finally removed as too old to benefit.
Many of the children brought to our notice for conspicuous
failure to learn proved to have intelligence quotients above
that usually regarded as educationally subnormal (about 75)
but were, for various reason incapable of making educational
progress without the special help which could not be afforded
them in a normal class of up to 40 pupils It was for
children of this type, the potentially remedial cases, that
we had long wished to set up small classes in ordinary
schools where they could receive individual attention suited
to their particular disability from a teacher keen and able
to concentrate on remedial work.
The remedial class started at Markhouse Secondary School
in 1952 had to be terminated after two years because of the
then increasing pressure on available accommodation, but with
the transfer of the bulge to the secondary schools in 1958
came the possibility of setting up one or two small special
classes, this time in junior schools. The Borough Education
Officer, with the willing co-operation of the head teachers