LEGAL PROVISIONS 



veyance can be found, and the board of health shall at once be 

 notified. 



TESTS OF SIGHT AND HEARING AND EXAMINATION FOR DIS- 

 ABILITY OR DEFECTS 



Section 5. The school committee of every city and 

 town shall cause every child in the public schools to be sepa- 

 rately and carefully tested and examined at least once in every 

 school year to ascertain whether he is suffering from defective 

 sight or hearing or from any other disability or defect tending 

 to prevent his receiving the full benefit of his school work, or 

 requiring a modification of the school work in order to pre- 

 vent injury to the child or to secure the best educational re- 

 sults. The tests of sight and hearing shall be made by teachers. 

 The committee shall cause notice of any defect or disability re- 

 quiring treatment to be sent to the parent or guardian of the 

 child, and shall require a physical record of each child to be 

 kept in such form as the state board of education shall pre- 

 scribe. 



STATE BOARD OF HEALTH TO PRESCRIBE DIRECTIONS: STATE 

 BOARD OF EDUCATION TO FURNISH RULES, ETC. 



Section 6. The state board of health shall prescribe the 

 directions for tests of sight and hearing and the state board 

 of education shall, after consultation with the state board 

 of health, prescribe and furnish to school committees suitable 

 rules of instruction, test cards, blanks, record books, and 

 other useful appliances for carrying out the purposes of this 

 act, and shall provide for pupils in the normal schools instruc- 

 tion and practice in the best methods of testing the sight and 

 hearing of children. The state board of education may 

 expend during the year nineteen hundred and six a sum not 

 greater than fifteen hundred dollars and annually thereafter a 

 sum not greater than five hundred dollars* for the purpose of 

 supplying the material required by this act. 



The English statute and the Massachusetts one are simi- 

 lar in that both make medical inspection compulsory, both place 

 the administration in the hands of the educational authorities, 

 and that neither provides for procedure against neglectful par- 

 ents of defective children. They prescribe different methods of 

 * Eight hundred dollars now appropriated under Chapter 189, Acts of 1908. 



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