HELP FOR JUVENILES

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 7, 3 October 1927, Page 6

HELP FOR JUVENILES

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

SYSTEM OPERATING IN

GREAT BRITAIN

(Written by Professor J. Hight, Litt.lJ., for The Dominion.)

Up to 1909 there were no public arrangements in England and Wales for advising boys and girls as to suitable occupations and placing them in employment. When the Board of Trade first set up labour exchanges, many of these had special juvenile departments to which were attached Juvenile Advisory Committees. But the Education Act of 1910 empowered local education authorities to undertake this work if they saw fit in the case of children under seventeen, a limit extended to eighteen years by the Act of 1918. Many such authorities took advantage of the powers thus granted. The work as -t had then developed involved, first, giving advice on the selection of occupation, and, secondly, registering applicants for employment and bringing them into touch with employers having vacancies. It was agreed iu 1911 between the two central Departments concerned, the Boards of Trade and Education, that in all areas where the local education authority had undertaken the work, the first function should be discharged by the authority and the second by the authority and labour exchange in co-operation. As the system developed during the next thirteen years it exhibited this essential feature, that the officers of the Board of Trade (after 1917, the Ministry of Labour) dealt with employers and carried out the actual placing of boys and girls in employment, while the education authority secured the necessary scholastic and medical records, interviewed, and advised juveniles and parents, and, in co-opcration with the exchange officers, registered applications for employment and seapplieants for vacancies Between 1911 and 1921 unemployment insurance was introduced and extended, and bv the latter year the Ministry of Labour had large responsibilities in this respect for juveniles between sixteen and eighteen in employment in all areas. It must be understood that in those areas whereon the local education authorities did not choose to exercise the powers granted by the Act of 1910, the work in all its branches was done entirely bv the labour exchanges under the Board of Thadc and later the Miuistry of Labour. Difficulties of Dual System. Practical difficulties arose where the dual system was in force. Lord Chelmsford was appointed to inquire and report, and recommended in 19'21 that, if an education authority decided to exercise powers iu regard to choice of employment, it should be responsible for all tiie work, including placing iu work and relations with employers, and should also undertake the administration of unemployment insurance up to eighteen years of age, since this work was intimately connected with the finding and retention of suitable employment. Lord Chelmsford was convinced that the work could be done, and was being done, with complete efficiency, by either a Juvenile Employment Committee of the education authority or a Juvenile Advisory Committee of the Aliuistrv of Labour, but that clashes were produced by the co-oper-ative system whereby the labour authority had a hand wherever the education authority exercised its powers. As his primary object was to remove the cause of difficulty, he recommended the continuance of the dual system without the co-operation that had been instituted in 1911. Full legal provisions for carrying his recommendations into effect were not made till 1923, when an Act provided that education authorities undertaking choice of employment powers must accept the responsibility for the administration of unemployment benefit to persons under eighteen years. The position at the present time iu respect of the administrative machinery is that the Ministry of Labour and the Board of Education, with the local authorities, is each fully responsible in its own territorial sphere (as marked out by the degree to which the local education authorities avail themselves of their option) for this work The local education authority does the work in a majority of the county boroughs (fifty-six), and between onethird and one-half of the areas of noncounty boroughs (twenty-six) and urban districts (twenty-one), while in Loudon and in the majority of the counties and in Hie remaining areas it falls to the Ministry of Labour In 19'26, there were 319 exchange areas; in 166 of these the education authority is responsible, and in 191 the Alinistry of Labour. The Practical English.

This brief review of the development of the system is interesting, not only for the lessons it may contain •or other countries, but as on example of the eminently practical way in which the English people shape and adjust their social institutions to the particular needs of the hour and the place; but it would not be complete without some reference to the first report, recently published, of what is generally known as the Malcolm Committee, appointed to inquire into the public system of education “in relation to the requirements of trade end i: dustry, with particular reference to the adequacy of the arrangements for enabling young persons to enter into an 1 retain suitable employment.’’ This committee necessarily considered very carefully the dual system that circumstances had moulded It believes that this system rests fundamentally on the recognition that a juveniP of fourteen to eighteen years may be regarded from one point of view as “a possible or actual worker filling his place in the industrial scheme of the country,” and from another as a subject of interest and concern to the education authorities, not only as a product of the school system, but also as a potential part-time scholar in a technical or continuation school, or as even being included in an extended full-time educational system. It might also have stated Hie view so thoroughly stressed at the late Imperial Education Conference, that education, being vitally concerned with preparation for the life and livelihood of the young, cannot abandon all interest and control in the pupil at the stage when he leaves the elementary school. Local Option. As regards leaving the undertaking of the work to the option of the local authority, the committee favours local option: many local authorities recognise the importance of the service and perform it with great efficiency; the machinery of local government can be easily adjusted to its performance; the system has the advantage of securing that the same authority deals with the bov or girl during the school life and the years immediately following; it elicits strong local interest and the cooperation of helpful voluntary agencies; and being based on an elected body whose activities are correlated with those of similar bodies within the area, it is, for England, "the most natural and most effective wav of dealing with a subiect of this kind.” The committee therefore is unwilling to recommend the abolition of local option, but it thinks it would be unwise to impose

the work compulsorily on cvciy local authority. There should be a wise freedom allowed, even though this makes questions of "co-operation more difficult than they would be if, locally, the organisations were all of one type.” The advantages of freedom and variety outweigh the disadvantages of uniformity, and it is possible to overcome some of the disadvantages that attend freedom. But the committee is not so favourably inclined towards the dualism at the centre of administration, and would put the central control completely in the hands of the Ministry of Labour. IT gives due weight to the considerations that central duality is a natural result of the twofold local public arrangements for helping the juvenile, that the local authorities prefer to work with a Government Department with whose methods they are accustomed, and that very close relations have been established between the two .Ministers of Education and Labour, but it feels — (1) That the system contains a serious element of inconvenience that may lead to friction and delay; (2) that “juvenile employment cannot be treated from a purely local point of view, since many industrial questions are wider in incidence than the area of a particular local authority, and even where an industry is to a large extent localised it nearly always overlaps two or more such areas”; and (3) that “general industrial problems can rarely, if ever, be treated piecemeal by districts but assume a national character, frequently concerning Scotland, as .well as England and Wales.” Whilst local option should be retained, it recommends that one Government Department, the Ministry of Labour, should be ultimately responsible for the whole service. The Alinistry, it is urged, should leave the local education authorities, as far as possible, to conduct and develop the work on individual lines, in order to secure the full benefit of local administration adapted to local needs. “It is particularly important that authorities should be given a reasonably free hand to conduct the administration in a manner consistent with their general educational policy.” Aloreover, there should be established a national advisory council for juvenile employment, on which local education authorities should '. be strongly represented. Employment Functions. The local education authority performs i.S employment functions through a Juvenile Employment Committee, which is a sub-committee of the Education Committee of the council of the authority, but includes representatives of tlie employers and workers in the area, and representatives of teachers and voluntary social organisations. It is assisted by a paid staff, and often voluntary helpers. It furnishes advice and information to the children while still at school, collects information of all kinds bearing upon employment of children during and after school, interviews applicants who have been registered for employment, secures and maintains relations with employers, registers their vacancies, selects and submits juveniles for these vacancies, and keeps in touch with the young people who are in employment by some system of “aftercare.”

Similar methods are followed by the Juvenile Advisory Committees, through which the Alinistry of Labour works in those areas where the education authorities have not exercised their option under the Act of 1910. About a third of the members of the J.A.C. represent the local education authority, and the teachers of the area. The J.A.C is generally in very close touch with all tlie employers in the district, and the after-care of the juveniles after they have been placed in employment is a prominent feature of their work. This is done by visits to employers, open evenings at the employment exchange centre for juveniles and their parents, information from voluntary organisations, and, in difficult cases only, by visits to the juveniles’ homes. Vocational guidance, to be effective, requires many favourable conditions. The children and their parents must be thoroughly instructed in industrial conditions and prospects; the directors of the employment exchanges must have an intimate acquaintance with the character of local trades and industries, and their opportunities and probable developments, and must follow up closely the careers and prospects of the boys and girls after they have been placed in employment. All these imply also some knowledge of industrial factors outside the. area in question, as the economic life of every locality is now intimately affected by conditions far beyond its boundaries. Aloreover, full benefits cannot be derived from a system of guidance, however perfect in itself, unless industry is in a fairly normal state of development In England at present, with the very slack demand for labour, children have often to take whatever employment they can get, irrespective of its suitability to their needs, capacities, or aspirations, and will move out of it as soon as opportunity offers.

An interesting question is the extent to which the selection of an occupation is influenced bv some scientifically determined estimate of the child’s capabilities. There is, however, no space to deal with the psychological aspect of the subject here. The magnitude of the work to be done in guiding juveniles to employ ment in England is brought out by the statistics, which show that about 600,000 leave school every year for employment, and about two million persons are employed under the age of eighteen. But the importance of the work is vital, as great in a small country as in a large one, and if we can sav it is greater in one place than another, the most fruitful application of a sound system of vocational guidance must be in a young country seeking solid foundations for its economic life