BOYS FOR TRADES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 226, 23 September 1936, Page 3

BOYS FOR TRADES.

COLLEGE TRAINING. DEFICIENCIES OF SYSTEM. APPRENTICESHIPS ARCHAIC? (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) i WELLINGTON, this day. The ability of technical colleges to meet modern industrial conditions and the value of the apprenticeship system were challenged by the Hon. P. .Fraser, Minister of Education, in an address to the conference of the Technical Education Association. Mr. Fraser said that good as the colleges were, there was room for improvement, and the Government was out to help as much as possible, as it realised the importance of the work. There was a proposal, which he had advocated, that part of an apprentice's time should be devoted to training at a technical college for a day or two each week. Perhaps something even more drastic would be required. Personally he wondered whether the apprenticeship system were not archaic, and whether it had not already outlived its usefulness. Nobody could claim as satisfactory a system that kept a boy running ines- : sages for six months and made it possible for the worst type of employer to train a boy in a few months to do one j or two things, and to keep him at that until his apprenticeship was almost i over. Mr. Fraser added that in such j cases a boy turned out inefficient, and i his opportunity of making good was stultified.