DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 15306, 6 August 1923, Page 4

DAY BY DAY.

Attention was drawn to the fact by the director of the

Apprentices for The Railways.

Wellington Technical College at a meeting of the

Board of Governors recently that in -Australia the Railway Department had made special arrangements for the daytime education of their apprentices in engineering. Under the regulations of the New Zealand Hallway Department, added Mr Howell, any boy who cannot get past the fifth standard by the age of fifteen was just as welcome an apprentice as a boy of fifteen who had had two years' preliminary engineering training and had passed the examination of the City and Guilds of London in this subject, while a boy a year older, no matter what his training and ability may be, was of no use to them at all as an apprentice. Few evening students could give more than ten hours a week to their studies, and that, of course, at tho end of a day of more or less strenuous work in the shops. While there was no doubt that some boys of strong physique could, from the age of sixteen upwards, do a certain amount of evening work without detriment, nevertheless, it often happened that boys with keen brains and unusual capacity, had not tho physique which would enable them to undertake night work without undue strain, and such boys, under the regime that the mechanical engineers wished to maintain, must either forego their training or suffer physical injury that will lower their efficiency for the rest of their lives. It war, decided by the board (says the Post) to adopt the director's report, and refer the matter to the local branch of the British Medical Association. It was also resolved to write to the Railway Department requesting that the age limit of apprentices be raised to sixteen.