[277]. Report on the Working of the Education (Provision of Meals) Act up to March 31, 1909, p. 17.
[278]. The head teachers receive 5s. a week for supervising dinners, and 2s. 6d. for breakfasts; the assistant teachers 4s. and 2s. respectively. At Derby also the teachers are paid. (Report of the School Medical Officer for Derby, 1911, p. 61.) This payment is very exceptional.
[279]. At Leeds, for instance, the teacher will perhaps be called on for a day or two every two months. At Liverpool a teacher is supposed to attend once a fortnight, but often no teacher at all is present. At Bootle the turn may be one day a week or a fortnight, or perhaps a week at a time; here the teachers, we were informed, voluntarily give their services "under protest," a fact which, when one considers the conditions under which they are asked to serve the meals, is not surprising.
[280]. "The Importance of a Well-Advised and Comprehensive Scheme in the Selection of Children ... under the Education (Provision of Meals) Act," by Victor J. Blake, in Rearing an Imperial Race, edited by C. E. Hecht, 1913, p. 24.
[281]. Leeds Education Committee, Rules for the Management of Dinner Centres. At Bradford it is noticeable that it is as a general rule the men teachers who supervise the meals; women teachers assist, but the responsibility for the management of the whole centre seems to involve too great a strain upon them.
[282]. Report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education for 1911, p. 280.
[283]. London's Children: How to Feed Them and How not to Feed Them, by Margaret McMillan and A. Cobden-Sanderson, 1909, p. 11. We have met with this ideal arrangement only at one school—a small "special" school for feeble-minded children at Bradford (see post, pp. 121-2.).
[284]. Knives were used at Bradford for a time, but were given up, as it was found that the children hurt themselves. Their use demands, of course, much supervision, but they might be given to the elder children at any rate.
[285]. At Birmingham "in one school the same mugs [for cocoa] were used twice over for different children without being washed. The supply of utensils at several of the schools was too small for the numbers fed." (The Public Feeding of Elementary School Children, by Phyllis D. Winder, 1913, p. 43.)
[286]. See preamble to the Education (Provision of Meals) Act Amendment Bill, July 20, 1910. "This Bill introduces no new principle, but simply extends the Act to render permissible the continued operation of the Act during the holidays, a point which, when the original Act was passing through Parliament, it was generally thought was covered."