APPRENTICESHIP

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 109, 11 May 1938, Page 12

APPRENTICESHIP

MEANS OF TRAINING

MR. RIDLING'S CRITICISM

VALUE OF TECHNICAL

COLLEGES

"There is practically no apprentice | today who is given training in the trade to which he is apprenticed," said Mr. R. G. Ridling, Director of the Wellington Technical College, at the annual conference of the New Zealand Technical School Teachers' Association today. "It has become the business of the technical colleges," said Mr. Ridling, "to give that training. We should make it our business to urge the Government to see that these young people are given the opportunities for training that are available. The opportunities of training in industry today are governed completely by profit-making. Employers cannot, under the system of very difficult economic stress and competition, . arrange for the training of their apprentices. We must see that the training is given where it can be given, in the, technical colleges." Mr. Ridling was then speaking in support of the following Christchurch remit which was carried:— "That it should be made compulsory for girls who are apprenticed to a sewing trade, and who are not given training in all brancehs of the trade to attend suitable day classes at the Technic! College, and that this principle be applied to all trades." The remit is to be sent to the Ministers of Labour and Education. NATIONAL VIEWPOINT. "The apprenticeship system is a means of increasing profits," declared Mr. Ridling, when speaking later in support of another remit. "After a long experience of the apprenticeship system, that is the conclusion to which I have come. We have to look at it from the national point of view. Our people have to be trained to maintain a national standard of production and have to be educated in their own business. Means have to be found to enable that training to be given, and those means should be the best possible means we can find." The remit, also from Christchurch, was carried, as follows:—"That this conference again emphasises the desirability of apprentices being allowed to obtain part of their school instruction in their employer's time,, thus bringing the New Zealand apprenticeship system more into line with that of other countries." . On the motion of Mr. Ridling, the (conference passed the following resolution:—"That the Minister of Education be asked whether it is proposed to implement the recommendations made in. the report on apprenticeship I presented by the Technical Education Association in September, 1937, as .this association regards the recommendations as of fundamental and material | importance."