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be used also. All the classes have attracted visits from many
professional workers, and hopefully have provided a
stimulus for similar developments in other L.E.A.s.
At Martindale School during 1972 the Headmaster
Mr. Higgon, Miss Dorothea Meyerhof Educational
Psychologist London Borough of Hillingdon and I carried
out a small study of some of the abilities and possible
learning difficulties of the group of children with spina
bifida in the school. We were interested particularly to
discover (a) if there were any special difficulties which
appeared to characterise the group as a whole, and which
might require modifications or additions to the teaching
approach to these children, and (b) if there were within the
group any special difficulties characteristic of those
children who had needed greater surgical intervention and
more extensive hospitalisation. We did indeed find that for
our small group of children (about 31 in number) a very
large number appeared to have some problems in eye hand
coordination and certain kinds of visual perceptual tasks,
which might affect their ability to develop reading and
writing skills without special help. We found also that there
appeared to be some differences in learning ability and
concentration between the small group of children who had
needed comparatively little surgical intervention and
hospitalisation and the larger group who had needed a
great deal. The relevance of our findings (using two
different kinds of assessments of reasoning ability) to a
teaching approach to these children is being explored. Our
findings are very much in line with the results of larger
developmental studies of children with spina bifida now in
the course of being published.
School Psychological Service
I am grateful to Mrs. M. Pears, BA, for submitting the
following report.
Referrals to the School Psychological Service remained at a
high level throughout this year. Headteachers, School
Medical Officers, the Health Department and parents
continued to be the main sources and the variety of
problems referred draws attention to the breadth of the
service offered to the community by the School
Psychological Service team which at present consists of
3 psychologists, 1 full time and 1 part-time Educational
Social Worker and 1 full time and 1 part-time remedial
teacher for cases of severe reading disability.
Figures concerning the major part of the work of each
discipline are given below together with a table of new
referrals.
Psychologists
School visits within the Borough 250
School visits outside the Borough 14
Assessments of new cases 270
Interviews with parents 126
Children seen weekly for individual
educational therapy 12
Seminars for remedial teachers (primary
and secondary) 40
Educational Social Workers
Number of families being seen 64
Number of interviews at home 458
Number of interviews at Centre 125
Visits to schools (boarding and day); to
hospitals; Court attendances 35
Remedial Teachers
Number of children seen during the year
Number of boys 40
Number of girls 5
Number of secondary schoolchildren now receiving
help 27
Number of primary schoolchildren now receiving
help 18

Number of new cases referred to Educational Social
Worker 35
Except for the departure in April of Miss Fleetwood our
much valued part-time Educational School Worker, the
staff of the School Psychological Service remained
constant throughout this year and this enabled us to
consolidate work initiated in 1971.
Consolidation
The annual returns from primary schools continued and
the information they gave about their retarded readers
enabled the peripatetic remedial reading team members to
be deployed to best advantage as well as providing advance
information concerning children who would be in need of
remedial help on transferring to secondary schools.
Seminars for the peripatetic remedial team also
continued, and a core of highly proficient remedial reading
teachers is now emerging whose skills are at the disposal of
the less experienced members of the team.
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