AIR FORCE RECRUITS

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 105, 27 January 1940, Page 10

AIR FORCE RECRUITS

Selection And Training Of

Candidates

COMMITTEE INTERVIEWS 300 WELLINGTON MEN The progress made with the selection and educational training of Air Force recruits was reviewed yesterday by the Minister of Defence, Mr. Jones. He said, that the Royal New Zealand Air Force Selection Committee, comprising Group Captain T. M. Wilkes (chairman). Mr. E. Caradus, Senior Inspector of Secondary Schools, and Director of Educational Services, and Flight Lieutenant' A. C. McArthur, recently completed its interviews in the various centres, and in four days had actually interviewed nearly 300 Wellington can-, didates.

“The quality of the men offering continues to be most satisfactory,” saia Mr. Jones. “Many of them have still to be medically examined and till these medical examinations are complete it will not be possible to state definitely how many of those selected will require educational training, but arrangements have been made for the estab' lishment of classes in four secondary schools: Hamilton, Palmerston North Boys’, Timaru Boys’, and Southland Boys’; in four technical schools: Wanganui, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin; and in two combined schools: New Plymouth and Napier Boys’. Four classes will also be held at the headquarters of the Auckland General Reconnaissance Squadron. In almost all these classes, the actual work of instruction will be performed by teachers employed either in these schools or in other schools in the same towns. Correspondence Instruction. “In Wellington it is proposed that the instruction should be given by certain of the education officers attached to the headquarters staff. The greaterportion of the work of these officers, however, will bo concerned with the instruction by correspondence of men selected for the Air Force in the small' er towns where the numbers are so small that it would be uneconomical to establish classes.” Mr. Jones said it was found by the committee in the concluding stages of the tour, as in the earlier stages, that most of the men interviewed were up to the educational standard required. Probably some 500 to 600 would be receiving instruction —some merely in order to brush up work done six or seven years ago; others in order to do the work for the first time. At the conclusion of the educational training all these men would be ready for entry into the Ground Training School, Levin. The Minister expressed his appreeia-. tion of the readiness of teachers to undertake this work of instruction and also of the willingness of the various school boards, often at some inconvenience to themselves, to release for this very important work those education officers who had been chosen from the staffs of their schools.