APPRENTICESHIP SYSTEM

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 23 September 1936, Page 8

APPRENTICESHIP SYSTEM

VALUE CHALLENGED BY MINISTER BETTER METHOD OF TRAINING ADVOCATED (by Telegraph—PreHß Association) WELLINGTON. This Day. The ability of technical classes ,to meet modern industrial conditions and the value of the apprenticeship system were challenged by the Hon. P. Fraser. Minister of Education, in an address at the conference of the Technical Education Association.

Mr Fraser said that good as the colleges were, there was room for improvement and the Government was out to help as much as possible, as it realised the importance of the work. There was a proposal he had advocated that part of the apprentice’s time should be devoted to training at a technical college for a day or two each week. Perhaps something even more drastic would be required. Personally he wondered if the apprenliceship system were not archaic and if it had not already outlived its usefulness. Nobody could claim as satisfactory a system that kept a boy running messages for six months and made it possible for the worst type of employer to train a boy in a few months to do one- or two things and to keep at that until his apprenticeship was almost over. Mr Fraser added that in such cases the boy turned out inefficient and his opportunity of making good was stultified.