Abstract
THE memorandum issued by the English Board of Education on the medical inspection of children in public elementary schools is a statesmanlike document. It propounds a policy; it indicates a method, and the method, no less than the policy, takes full account of conditions, difficulties, and obstacles. The memorandum gives body to the provisions of section 3 of the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907. This section confers three broad powers on education authorities, first, to provide special environments for special children, e.g. vacation schools, vacation classes, play centres, &c.; second, to establish a medical inspection of the individual children; thirdly, βto make such arrangements as may be sanctioned by the Board of Education for attending to the health and physical condition of the children educated in public elementary schools.β These three powers may be exercised in cooperation with voluntary agencies, of which, it is needless to say, there are many. But the point of importance is that the powers may now be exercised by the education authorities, and practically, since grants may be made to depend on their exercise, the education authorities are now placed under obligation to carry them into full effect. The memorandum proceeds on this assumption; but it aims rather at sketching a process of natural administrative growth than at imposing an imperative system to be immediately realised. Accordingly, it starts from what is already being done in several localities to supervise the hygiene of schools and scholars. The sanitary authorities are in possession. This Act does not supersede, it expands and supplements, their work. Here emerges the cardinal principle of the memorandum, namely, the extension of the conception of public health to include, not merely the environmental sanitation considered apart, but the individual child's health as it is affected by his environment in the widest sense-physical, educational, c.
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Medical Inspection of School Children . Nature 77, 426β427 (1908). https://doi.org/10.1038/077426a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/077426a0