SUPPORT GIVEN

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 256, 29 October 1942, Page 6

SUPPORT GIVEN

VOCATIONAL TRAINING

FOR MEMBERS OF FORCES (0.C.) WELLINGTON, this day. Hearty support of the movement for vocational education of members of the armed forces was expressed by the chairman, Mr. W. Apploton, and other members at a meeting of the Wellington Technical College Board of Governors. The board acceded to a request by the Director of Education that it allow the use of college workshops and classrooms for this purpose during the vacation. Answering a board member, Mr. Appleton said that correspondence courses were to be the basis of the scheme and the workshop practice would supplement it. The chairman said that from the beginning of the war the board had thought that the facilities of the college should be used more in the direction that was now proposed, and the board should assist in every possible way. Both the Sydney and the Melbourne technical colleges were conducting correspondence courses in a long list of subjects, and soldiers as far away as Port Moresby, New Guinea, were taking them. Every week university professors set off in army trucks on tours of camps, lecturing to audiences of soldiers as large as 2000 at night, and giving half-nour lectures to groups as small as 30 during the day.

He was glad the New Zealand Education Department was taking the steps it was to help soldiers to prepare themselves for life after the war. The director, Mr. R. G. Ridling, reported that a representative of the army had discussed with him the correspondence courses that the college was already operating. At the request of the army educational authorities he had indicated what additional courses might be required. If these were approved the college might have to establish a correspondence department.