School Premises Research Articles

The School-Community Library: A Viable Model for Developing School Libraries in South Africa

The aim of this study was to establish whether the combination of school-community or public libraries on school premises is a feasible solution to the lack of library services in previously disadvantaged areas. South Africa as a developing country needs to explore alternative arrangements in order to provide and improve information delivery to the multi-cultural and diverse people of the country. Gauld (1987) argues that combined libraries will ensure a more effective use of public money, by providing library service in communities which because of size and remoteness would have little chance of accessing alternative facilities. After a comprehensive review of the literature about experimentation with this model, this study determined the present condition of school libraries in South Africa to find out whether teachers, librarians, and community members would support the establishment of joint-use libraries in schools.

De l’institution à l’établissement. Le cas des collèges de banlieue

Are violence and delinquency phenomena that are inescapably linked with suburban schools ? The difficulties experienced by suburban establishments are spontaneously believed to originate in the students’ decaying social and family environment. A comparaison between suburban city schools enables a new approach to the subject. The problems these establishments have to cope with can also be ascribed to a weakening of the educational system. As a matter of fact, should a problem arise, the school has to settle it by itself and the only landmarks of teachers are their conscience and ability. Unable to offer the students general and integrating surroundings - appart from regulations - the schools fail to contend with deviant behaviours and their actions have no meaning beyond the school premises. Although these observations apply particulary to suburban, schools, in general, face this situation.

Assuring the quality of UK Local Government services: a case study of school meals catering

This article analyses the changing nature of quality assurance issues for the UK school meals service and presents the results of research into the impact on this service of the compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) regime. It considers the institutional and policy context within which the school meals service operates and shows how that context has qualified the maxim that the consumer knows best. Schools and their pupils have had little input into contract specifications for the school meals service. However, increased local discretion regarding the nutritional standards of school meals, the decentralisation to schools of responsibility for managing their own budgets and the growth of fast food’ catering outlets outwith school premises are, in combination, increasing the power of school managers and of pupils themselves relative to that of the central offices and committees of local education authorities. Hence, the balance of power between different stakeholder groups is changing, so modifying perceptions of what constitutes quality of service.

A survey of health promotion in Welsh secondary schools, 1995

Presents data from a 1995 self‐completion questionnaire survey of secondary schools in Wales on the organization and provision of health education teaching, the implementation of health‐related policies and the involvement of outside agencies in the planning and delivery of health promotion. The results from the 187 responding schools (82 per cent) show that a firm base exists for further developing health‐promoting secondary schools in Wales. Recommends that health education co‐ordinators devote preparation time to promote best practice in the subject and that schools put more effort into developing broadly based policies for health covering all those who use school premises. Advocates the structured integration of community resources into school programmes and improved understanding within schools of the concept of the health‐promoting school.

Effect of Urbanisation on the Nutritional Status of Primary School Children in Lagos ‐ Nigeria*

*Paper presented at the Urban Childhood International, Interdisciplinary Conference, Norwegian Centre for Child Research, Trondhcim, Norway, 9‐12June 1997. Effect of urbanisation on Nutritional status of 250 primary school children was assessed among the children of working parents. Children involved were those who were dropped early in the morning 6 am by parents and picked up around the school premises later in the evening between 6.30‐7.00pm in the University of Lagos Staff School. Questionnaires were prepared for the parents to fill including the history of the children, time usually spent with the children from Monday through Friday, dietary information including information on whether they were breast‐fed in childhood. These information emanated from the study 193 (77%) were breast‐fed exclusively for two months while 57 (22.8%) were both breast‐fed and bottle‐fed. On feeding habits, children fed on cookies and soft drinks around the school premises with dinner at home around 8.00pm. Food served for dinner was mainly carbohydrates. No time for interaction with parents Monday through Friday. Average Anthropometric measurements obtained from these children (7‐10 years) were 29kg, 132cm for weight and height. Incidence of nutritional anaemia was very high among these children 87 (34.8%) had severe anaemia, below 9gm%, 65 (26% moderate 7‐10gm%) and 98 (39.2%) had their haemoglobin above 10gm%. This study was carried out in Lagos University Staff School. This school is owned and run by the University Authority and admits both staff and non‐staff. Lagos University Staff School is an expensive private school well subsidised by the University for the staff children.

The relations of school staff smokers' attitudes about modeling smoking behavior in students and their receptivity to no-smoking policy.

This study examined school personnel smokers' reports regarding how they would feel if a no-smoking ban was instituted on school premises. Demographics, smoking history, interest in quitting, and perception of school staff as role models for student smoking behaviors were examined as concurrent predictors of personnel attitudes toward a school-wide no-smoking policy. Generally, the fifty-nine respondents, sampled from fourteen schools, were interested in quitting smoking, but they did not favor a policy prohibiting smoking on campus. A staff role model index was a significant predictor of support for a no-smoking policy; the stronger the belief that staff influence their students' smoking, the greater the desire for a smoking ban at school. Compliance by school staff to future regulations that schools become smokefree environments may be improved if staff believe or are taught that they can directly affect students' smoking behaviors.

Action on Nutrition

Describes a campaign to help schools set up school‐based nutrition action groups (SNAGs) to galvanize change towards provision of healthier food on school premises. Highlights the current lack of coherence present in many schools between what is taught about nutrition in the classroom and the type of food available at school meals. Explains how local authorities, education authorities, schools, parents, caterers, children and other relevant parties can work together to form and implement a common policy. Describes how schools now have the powers to influence contracts with caterers, and how caterers can expect to increase the range and volume of their business by working more closely with schools and pupils.

Oral assessment: the views of language teachers

Summary The interviews were not planned primarily to provide comprehensive information on all the aspects of oral assessment at GCSE but more specifically to complement the results of the experimental study. Some Examination Groups are more frequently mentioned, partly because they were the groups with which these teachers happened to be familiar. In another part of the country, other Groups would have been more frequently used (NISEC, WJEC, LEAG or NEA). The interviews concentrated on the conversation test and the oral assessment criteria for this test. However, teachers also expressed opinions about other aspects of the oral examination. The main points to emerge are listed below. 1. Oral assessment in Modern Languages as a component of national examinations is perceived by the teachers interviewed as fraught with difficulties. Many of these, such as the organisation of the examination during school hours and on school premises, are of a practical nature. There are also criticisms of some tasks, althoug...

Several Hundred Elementary and Secondary School Buildings and Premises on Lease or Loan

Editor's note: In downtown Shanghai, land costs almost as much as gold; many primary and secondary schools have to conduct classes on a rotation system owing to shortages in space. Two reporters from New China News Agency pointed to this strange phenomenon in their letter.

Legal liability in respect of school premises

Legal liability in respect of school premises

Crisis in our schools: survey of sanitation facilities in schools in Bloomsbury health district.

To survey sanitation facilities in schools in Bloomsbury health district. Postal questionnaire. Inner London health district. School nurses. 16 of 17 school nurses responded (37 of 41 schools). Fifteen schools did not have the minimum number of toilets and hand basins established in the Education (School Premises) Regulations 1981. In two schools toilets were kept locked for most of the day. In 10 schools toilet paper was not always available, and three of five secondary schools did not have disposal units for sanitary towels in the girls' toilet areas. In 18 of the schools the toilets were not kept adequately clean. These conditions raise serious questions about environmental health, with the potential for the spread of infectious diseases, and undermine attempts to teach children basic hygiene. Health professionals have an important role in assessing health and safety standards in schools and ensuring that necessary improvements are made.

Ten Ways to Avoid Costly Litigation for Illegal School Searches

earch and seizure continues to be a highly volatile S issue in education. Perhaps no single issue is more disputed than the right of students to be free from unreasonable search by school authorities. To search or not to search a pupil’s locker, desk, purse, and automobile on school premises presents a perplexing problem for educators. Basic to this issue is the question of precisely what constitutes a reasonable search. The reasonableness of the search becomes the critical issue in cases where students claim injury from illegal searches.

The law and animals in schools

The possible effect on school biology teaching of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 is reviewed. Because procedures covered by the Act are most unlikely to be authorized on school premises, its effects on primary and secondary education will be slight.

THE APPLICATION OF A COMPREHENSIVE VISUAL SCREENING PROGRAMME TO CHILDREN AGED 3–5 YEARS. CAN A MODIFIED PROCEDURE BE DEVISED FOR VISUAL SCREENING BY ANCILLARY STAFF?

Current commercially available tests to examine visual performance in children are discussed and adapted for a visual screening programme applied to 249 children aged 3-5 years at school or playgroup premises. Correlation of refractive and ocular muscle findings with the remaining tests is evaluated. A simplified screening procedure is thereby recommended which may be undertaken by ancillary staff, without any need for sophisticated equipment. This would enable identification, for further examination, of most children whose refraction and eye coordination are outside normal limits.

Teachers' Assessments of Primary School Buildings: the role of the physical environment in education

AbstractHow and what do British primary school teachers think about the buildings in which they work? Do they believe that these buildings influence the education that children receive? This paper contains a limited but detailed attempt to answer these two questions. This is presented by reporting linked case studies of the views expressed by teachers in ten widely differing school buildings in one particular local education authority. These views are discussed against a background of cuts in educational expenditure which have resulted, not least, in reduced maintenance to primary school premises. It is concluded that the teachers investigated tend to see themselves as poorly served by the physical environments in which they are asked to practise their teaching skills. Some of them believe that inadequacies in their environments are detrimental to education. For those who hold it, this belief may be self‐fulfilling.

Editorial: Equal Access: A New Direction in American Public Education

With the passage of the Equal Access Act (Title VIII of Public Law 98-377) by the United States Congress, by the Senate on 27 June 1984 and by the House on 25 July 1984, and signed into law by the president on 11 August 1984, a major step was taken toward the legitimation of a new direction in American public education. For the first time, the right of advocacy groups to meet in secondary public schools was not only given statutory endorsement by the legislative and executive branches of the federal government, but also specific steps were taken that would, in effect, ensure its implementation. The act makes it unlawful for any public secondary school which receives Fed eral assistance and which has a limited forum to deny equal access on the basis of religious, political, or philosophical, or other speech content, to any students who wish to conduct a meeting on the school premises.

Assessment of School Emergency Medical Services' (EMS) Needs and Evaluation of a School Trauma Awareness Program

The objective of this study was to evaluate a school Trauma Awareness (TA) program conducted by the Health Education Center (HEC) of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania under contract with the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Institutes. A total of 44 presentations were made before 3545 persons dealing with school children in seven counties of western Pennsylvania. The TA program was undertaken because: l) the leading cause of death among school-age children in the USA during the 1970s was accidents, 60% of which occurred on school premises or going to and from school; and 2) there was a need for improvement of EMS in the local schools.

New Perspectives on Classroom Learning

One of the charges still made by practising teachers against educational research (and in particular against educational psychological research) is that it is irrelevant to real classroom needs. By this they mean that it fails to provide information which can be used by the class teacher in the development of practical strategies to help children learn. Though books on the psychology of learning abound, and though the study of learning is in effect the central concern of the psychologist, teachers reject much of the material put across to them on the grounds that it is too theoretical and abstract or (one suspects) too tedious and incomprehensible. Laboratory designed experiments may be all right for the research journals and for the advanced student, but it seems they have limited appeal for the busy practitioner working in less than ideal circumstances and with only a rudimentary grounding in the kind of language that psychologists speak. The teachers, of course, have a point. A great deal of the research undertaken by educational psychologists, for all that it employs children as subjects and takes place on school premises, is of the 'pure' kind, and often there is little or no indication of how it can be applied to classroom work. In addition many academics have lost touch with what it actually feels like to be a class teacher, and in consequence find it hard to identify practically-orientated research topics. But the psychologist is not entirely to blame. The problem lies in part with the philosophical/political model of man that we in the West have created in the second half of the twentieth century. In earlier years, to judge from the insights provided by historians and by old school text books and manuals of pedagogy, the model of man and the psychology of education associated with it were much more straightforward matters. The child was seen as

Accidents to isle of wight schoolchildren occurring on school premises—1961–1963

Summary A retrospective study of accidents to schoolchildren occurring on school premises is reported. Reports on 194 accidents rendered by schools over the two years 1961/62–1962/63 were analysed, and the results are briefly discussed.

Constitutional Law. Separation of Church and State. Released Time in Public Schools Held Constitutional Where Sectarian Classes Are Conducted off School Premises and School Authorities Do Not Supervise Program

Constitutional Law. Separation of Church and State. Released Time in Public Schools Held Constitutional Where Sectarian Classes Are Conducted off School Premises and School Authorities Do Not Supervise Program