[Report 1936] / School Medical Officer of Health, Salop / Shropshire County Council.
- Shropshire (England). County Council.
- Date:
- 1936
Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Credit: [Report 1936] / School Medical Officer of Health, Salop / Shropshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.
8/42 (page 6)
![Meals for School Children. The health of the children is likely to be improved by arrangements whereby a really good meal can be provided in the school during the middle of the day, and at the present time the problem of how to do this is being dealt with in individual schools to varying extents by different methods. The number of schools in which a good hot meal is provided is not large, but in many schools something is being done as a result of the initiative of the head teachers, and full credit and every encouragement should be given to those who try to provide for the needs of the children in this respect. Milk. In 145 schools a regular supply of milk, which is consumed as a rule in the middle of the fore¬ noon, is now being provided in bottles containing a third of a pint at a cost of ^d. In a large number of schools a hot drink, usually consisting of cows’ milk modified in some way and sold under a trade name, is sold to the children. Although this last is all to the good and many children prefer such a drink to one consisting entirely of cows’ milk, the chief nutritive value of these preparations lies, as a rule, in the cows’ milk which they contain. Milk Marketing Board’s Scheme for supplying Milk to School Children. This scheme is a most imiportant one owing to its beneficial effect on the health and nutrition of the school children, and it is very unfortunate that greater facilities for securing a supply of milk for the children are not available. Even when the farm where the milk is produced is in close proximity to the school, the producer complains that the remuneration is not commensurate with the trouble and expense involved ; and this is certainly so when a small quantity of milk has to be delivered to a country school some distance away. When one remembers that the milk must be supplied in bottles, and that these bottles have to be washed, sterilised, filled, capped, delivered, collected and replaced when they get broken, it will readily be appreciated that there is not much profit in the scheme for the milk-producers, many of whom supply the milk to certain of the schools merely on compassionate grounds, in the belief that it is good for the children. The experience of another year has served to confirm the opinion that there is little possibility of the present scheme covering the whole of the county ; indeed the tendency is for producers who have supplied milk to the schools to give it up through dissatisfaction with the financial return. This scheme requires that all milk supplied to schools should be approved by the County Medical Officer of Health, and the Board of Education states in Circular 1437 that “ where a supply of efficiently pasteurised milk is available, such milk should in all cases be provided. In other areas, all possible precautions should be taken to ensure as far as practicable the safety of the supply.” The following are the particulars with regard to the progress of this scheme in this County :— Total number of children on the Registers of the Secondary and Elemen¬ tary Schools in this County . . . . . . . . . . . . 30,744 Number of children on the Registers of the schools which are obtaining milk under the Milk Marketing Board’s Scheme . . . . . . 17,442 Grades of Milk supplied to these schools and the number of whom each special grade is available are as follows :— Tuberculin Tested Milk Accredited Milk Pasteurised ]Milk Boiled Milk children for 1,235 i 9,825 ' 5,847 535 17,442](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30087351_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
