Criticism of training scheme rejected

Press, 29 June 1983, Page 19

Criticism of training scheme rejected

Parliamentary reporter Criticism of the Government’s new School-leaver Training and Employment Preparation Scheme (S.T.E.P.S.) has been rejected by the chairman of the Government caucus employment committee, Mr G. W. F. Thompson. The scheme would not entice young people from school, as some educationists had asserted, said Mr Thompson, who was one of the scheme’s architects. “We were very conscious of the enticement problem but see the scheme generally dealing with the gaps outside the school system,” he said. S.T.E.P.S. is aimed at school-leavers aged 15 and 16 who have not found work. Participants enter work skills training programmes during which they receive a $l5 a week allowance if

they are 15 and $63 if they are 16. Employers are paid to hire youths from the programmes. The allowances would encourage pupils to leave school because they lacked the stigma of the dole, educationists have said. But Mr Thompson said there was an eight-week job-search period before school-leavers became eligible. They were only placed on the scheme if nothing else was available. Educationists have also said the resources for S.T.E.P.S. should have gone into school-to-work transition programmes. In the latest Post-Prim-ary Teachers’ Association journal the executive director of the National Council for Adult Education, Mr lain Galloway, said S.T.E.P.S. included training that should be provided in

schools. “It should be the right of every individual to have the chance to learn such things as confidence, deportment, job planning, and leisure activities,” he said. “Young people need to have some sense of purpose to stay in school and if schools could offer these sorts of subjects that may help.” Mr Thompson said that such criticism showed a misunderstanding of the needs of the target group. “We need to deal right now with a group who have rejected or failed in the standard education system,” he said. It was posible that some parts of S.T.E.P.S. would be returned to the school system, but only if there were “considerable changes in attitude” to the schools’ traditional role.