APPRENTICE SYSTEM

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19127, 23 September 1936, Page 5

APPRENTICE SYSTEM

USEFULNESS QUERIED

COMMENT BY MINISTER

(Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day

The ability of technical colleges to meet modern industrial conditions and the value of the apprenticeship system were challenged by the Hon. P. Eraser, Minister of Education, in an address to a conference of the Technical Education Association.

Mr. Eraser 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 an apprentice's time should be devoted to training at a technical college for a day or two each wee!;. Perhaps something even more drastic would be required. Personally, he wondered if the apprenticeship 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 i'ew months to do one or two things, and to keep him at that until his apprenticeship was almost over.

Mr. Eraser added that in such cases a hoy turned out inefficient ,and the opportunity of making good was stultified.