View report page

Report of the Principal School Medical Officer for the year 1970
Organisation
This is the sixth annual report on the School
Health Service provided since 1st April,
1965 by the London Borough of Hounslow.
The arrangement whereby the school health
service was closely integrated with the
other health services administered by the
Department of Health has continued Joint
use is made of medical, dental, nursing and
other staff as well as of clinic premises.
Co-operation
It is important that there is an exchange of
information between hospital general
practitioner and school medical staff.
On the whole local hospitals send reports
to the school medical officers on children who
have been in-patients; others tend not to do
so automatically but will send reports on
request.
Before any child is referred for specialist
or hospital treatment it is the practice, except
in emergencies, to ask the family doctor
whether he is in agreement, or whether he
wishes to treat or refer the child himself.
School Health Service
School Population
At the end of the year the maintained school
population was
Nursery schools and classes 290
Primary schools 19,389
Secondary modern schools 854
Grammar schools 1,967
Comprehensive schools 9,219
Special schools 580
Total 32,299
Periodic Medical Inspection
Under the provisions of the Education Act it
is the duty of a local authority to provide at
appropriate intervals for the medical inspection
of pupils in attendance at any school provided
by them. The authority may require the parent
of any pupil, in attendance at such school, to
submit the pupil for medical inspection in
accordance with the arrangements made for
such inspection
Periodic medical inspections are carried
out on school entry, at the ages of eight and
eleven years, and at school leaving age
Efforts are made to examine children in nursery
classes each term. The medical examination
at eleven years includes a colour vision test
When a periodic medical inspection is
arranged, the head teacher is asked to submit
the names of any other pupils in whose case
special medical inspection is thought to be
advisable. Pupils requiring follow-up from
previous medical inspections can also be seen
so that the visit of the medical officer to the
school is used to cover a wider field than a
selected age group. If the best results are to
be obtained from these visits to school there
should be close collaboration and consultation
between medical officer and head teacher
At the leavers examination. Form Y9 is
completed for each pupil and forwarded to the
Youth Employment Officer. This form indicates
if there are any health reasons for avoiding
certain types of occupation.
The number of pupils submitted to periodic
medical inspection during the year was 8 168
and the results are shown in Table 29 The
physical condition of 80 (0.98%) was considered
to be unsatisfactory. The concept of unsatis
factory physical conditions varies with the
examining doctors but the important point is
that efforts are made to bring the pupil to a
satisfactory physical state.
Special Examinations and Re-examinations
Any parent head teacher school nurse, speech
therapist physiotherapist or audiometrician
and others may request the medical examination
47