TECHNICAL PUPILS’ DISPLAY

Dominion, Volume 39, Issue 28, 27 October 1945, Page 9

TECHNICAL PUPILS’ DISPLAY

Hutt Valley Memorial College

Set in the heart of one of the country's lending industrial areas, the Hutt Valley Memorial Technical College. Petoiie, gives, practical training to an ever-increasing roll of young New Zealanders who will enter industrial and commercial life, and to girls who arc preparing for homecraft or office duties. The college has been .working this year under the severe handicap of restricted space and extensive building alterations, but even so the staff and pupils were able to present their annual display as usual at the college yesterday. Though not on the extensive scale of previous years, the display was still a valuable and intensely interesting guide to the functions of the college and the standard of the work achieved there.

Boys were busy with engineering, carpentry, electricity, signalling, mechanical drawing, metalwork, and numerous other skilled crafts. Girls’ work included needlework, dressmaking, home science projects, typwriting nnd other activities. The work of students engaged in social studies and arts was also exhibited. The Air Training Corps had provided a model aerodrome, and a display of technical equipment, and boys were busy at signalling with apparatus from the school’s signal corps. The work of the plumbing, metalwork, and carpentry sections attracted patrieular attention In the carpentry room were examples of joinery and home-building done accurately to seale, and some fine examples of the cabinet-making craft. In the motor-engineering section special attention was given to a diesel engine taken from a captured Italian tank and used for instruction purposes. There was also a new car engine of a popular make, presented by a leadiug motor firm for the use of the college. The facilities offered by the college iti the various trade sections have been extended to many men of the Army and Air Force who have taken the opportunity to extend their knowledge and skill in preparation for return to civilian life. In this sphere the college has cooperated with the Army Education and Welfare Service. Similarly, in woolclassing there have been servicemen taking instruction, and they have included two Americans. Social studies are attracting more and more interest among pupils. There were on display numerous projects. dealing patrieularly with the social and industrial life of the Hutt Valley. The pupils have undertaken regional surveys of their district, and have made excursions into the factories and to the State housing schemes. In the art section some of the outstanding work was done in oils. Girls in the dressmaking and needlework, classes displayed samples of highly skilled work. The second-year girls were present in frocks which they themselves had made. Prizewinners in the annual contest for the clarke embroidery shield were: N. McLennan 1. D. Davies 2, M. Floyd 3.