H.—llb

Evidence submitted to us showed that the technical schools find it very difficult to get a sufficient number of well-qualified instructors in trade subjects. It appears that the Education Department is at present unable to offer salaries that will attract suitable men from industry. Some means of overcoming this difficulty must be found, and we recommend that when salary scales affecting technical teachers are drawn up, due regard be paid to the remuneration of similarly qualified persons in industry. Industry has a part to play in helping the schools to find suitable instructors. We recognize that often the man who would be a good technical teacher is invaluable in an industrial organization, but in the long-run industry will benefit by his transfer to a post where he is teaching apprentices and potential apprentices. We have evidence that teachers of technical subjects lose touch with industrial developments, and we recommend that Dominion Apprenticeship Committees explore with the Education Department means by which teaching power may be made most effective. The adequacy of the equipment in technical schools was unfavourably criticized by several witnesses. The Education Department has been generous in its supply of certain types of equipment, but for some kinds of specialized trade instruction there is apparently a lack of up-to-date demonstration and other material. Practical help to the technical schools in this respect has already been generously given by both the motor trade and the printing trade, and we suggest that other industries might likewise co-operate with the technical schools in giving or lending specialized equipment for trade classes. With competent instructors, adequate equipment, and suitable accommodation —all have at times been lacking in the past —the technical schools could co-operate to the full with industry in the all-round training of apprentices. Moreover, the abler and more ambitious young men should have every opportunity to qualify for executive posts by continuing their education beyond the journeyman stage. We consider the State might help such young men by giving them bursaries for further specialized training in the same way as it now grants bursaries to entrants to certain professions. The State should be just as interested in the potential foreman or shop-manager as it is in the potential professional man. THE EDUCATION OF APPRENTICES There are many branches of industry in which practical experience needs to bo founded on an understanding of the principles underlying practice. Some theoretical training is therefore necessary for many apprentices if they are later to become competent skilled workmen. Both their practical training and their theoretical training we regard as part of their continued education. The everyday experience to be gained in a workshop under the guidance of skilled tradesmen is, for an apprentice, the important part of that educational process. Practical experience will be insufficient, however, if there be not a close relation between it and continued schooling in technical classes. Those classes should be a development of the full-time schooling the apprentice has received before he begins work. It was clear from the evidence submitted to us that technical training is accepted as necessary in most trades, yet the small percentage of apprentices who attend evening classes during their apprenticeship is astonishing. There were also many expressions of dissatisfaction with the adequacy of the training given under the present arrangement of evening classes. It seems to us that a measure of compulsion is necessary to ensure essential technical training, but we are unable to recommend compulsory evening classes. A. possible solution of the difficulty is to require attendance at technical classes within the usual hours of employment —that is, " daylight" training. The Commission is in favour of the adoption of daylight training for apprentices, and it believes that the practice should be introduced immediately in those trades for which technical schools are already adequately equipped. It recommends that each Dominion Apprenticeship Committee consider as soon as possible (1) whether or not daylight training is necessary in. its trade ; (2) the method of introducing it ; and (3) what time must elapse before the necessary arrangements can be made with the education authorities. As was indicated earlier, the question of compulsory attendance at technical classes is a matter for inclusion in apprenticeship orders. Section 5 (1) of the present Act should be amended to make it clear that such provisiotis may be included in apprenticeship orders. The subject of daylight training has been discussed frequently in the past. Indeed, the Legislature took steps in 1918 to make such training possible by amending the Education Act, 1914. Section 124 of that Act gave power to make regulations requiring attendance of any young person at technical classes, and the War Legislation and Statute Law Amendment Act, 1918, added the words " for one half-day during the daytime and one evening in any one week," together with the following proviso : "' Provided also that the regulations requiring part-time attendance during the day shall apply only to such trades, businesses, occupations, or callings, or any part or parts thereof, and only within such districts, as may be prescribed." No regulations appear to have been made under this section of the Act. Daylight training was discussed in 1923 at the Conference on the draft Bill referred to earlier. We think it advisable to summarize the evidence put before us, and to comment briefly on some points in that evidence. The arguments brought forward, maiuly by trade-union representatives and by teachers, in favour of the practice were : (1) technical training, as distinct from practical training, is necessary to make sure that apprentices become competent tradesmen; (2) to have such competent workers is to the employer's advantage ; (3) a boy at evening classes after a day's work is tired and unable to profit fully by the instruction he is given ; (4) daylight training is a practice in many other countries. On the other hand, employers' representatives, with a few exceptions, strongly opposed the introduction of the practice. Their arguments were : (1) in some trades— e.g., plastering —there is so little necessary theory that there is no point in having classes at all; (2) in most trades there are a good many men to whom theory is of no value, as they perform relatively routine tasks under the direction of foremen —in other words, attendance at technical classes does not increase the competence of the majority of the men ; (3) if some boys do increase their competence by taking classes in theory, then it is to their own profit and not to the employer's —they are seeking their own advancement; (4) things should not be made too " easy " for boys—study in their own time helps to develop character ; (5) whatever overseas practices may be, New Zealand tradesmen can compote on equal terms with skilled workers from other countries, including those in which daylight training is carried on ; (6) the normal five-year term of apprenticeship is now, in actual working-hours, less than it was twenty years ago, and it is necessary for a boy to spend the whole of this time in the workshop to gain the requisite practical experience to make him a tradesman.

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