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79
TO THE CHAIRMAN AND MEMBERS
of the
Walthamstow Education Committee.
Gentlemen,
I beg to present for your consideration my Annual Report, dealing
with the Elementary Schools and children under your control, in
accordance with the Regulations made under section 13 of the Education
(Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907.
The report is made mainly on the lines suggested in Circular 596 of
the Board of Education.
The close supervision of the school buildings by your Architect,
Superintendent of Repairs, and Members of the Committee has been
reflected in the excellent condition in which they have been at all times
kept.
A former Parliamentary Representative remarked that the Walthamstow
Elementary Schools were a special feature of the district; they
were similar to but better than high-class Grammar Schools. That
description of ten years ago holds good to-day.
My monthly reports to your Committee, dealing with the individual
schools and scholars, have made you quite familiar with all the work of
Medical Inspection, and it will be well within your memory that the
remedying of the defects found was the principal objective of the work.
The duty and obligation of the parents to their children in this
respect was kept steadily before them, and generally the parents have
responded well to our advice and instructions.
The migratory character of the population, the want of local facilities
(in the case of very poor parents) "for the amelioration of the evils
revealed by medical inspection," and the impossibility, with the staff at
my disposal, of " following up " the children as closely as is necessary,
militated largely against results commensurate with the work undertaken
and its importance.
A step forward has been taken by the appointment, in November, of
an Ophthalmic Surgeon, and he has already (April 3rd) dealt with
a large number of the outstanding unremedied cases of defective vision
which had accumulated during the year.
In future we shall be able to treat directly all our school children
who suffer from defects of vision, and thus the most serious of all the
defects found in school children will be remedied.