Heatherwood Hospital Special School

Education of Patients, The Hospital School

The following is an extract from the annual report from 1923, it lists the importance of education in the set up of the new hospital.

The average duration of stay of each patient will probably be found to considerably exceed one year. It therefore becomes of great importance that education should be provided for the patients while receiving treatment. Accordingly, arrangements have been made for the Institution to be certified as a Hospital School under the direct supervision of the Board of Education, and the educational work is based on the lines set forth in the Board of Education's Code for the teaching of physically defective children.

The school has a head mistress (Miss James) of considerable experience in such work, assisted by a competent staff. Each child receives three hours' instruction daily.

As the children are generally recumbent, apparatus and lessons are arranged to meet individual needs. As a rule ordinary school lessons occupy the morning sessions, the afternoons being largely devoted to hand-work, singing and recitation. Hand-work is selected which is peculiarly suited to developing most rapidly the mental powers as well as the manipulative skill of recumbent patients.

A happy atmosphere of activity is created, relieving the monotony of necessarily long-enforced recumbency and directing in well-ordered and useful lines mental activities which would otherwise remain latent or might become perverted.

London County Council Hospital Schools

The above picture was taken from a special pamphlet published in 1936 to advertise the opportunities for teachers in one of the hospital schools which were under the control of the LCC, Heatherwood was one of the twelve.

Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot.—(Classification—Surgical tuberculosis cases.)

Nominal accommodation, 136 (to be increased shortly to 236).

The period of time spent by the children at the hospital varies considerably ; some are discharged within a few months, while others remain for some years.

The children in the school are graded according to age and educational attainments. Most of the teaching is carried on at the bedside and is, therefore, “ individual.”

The school is in a Scale II area, under the Standard (Burnham) Scales.

Heatherwood Hospital & School

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