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(2) This assistance should consist, as circumstances and needs may require, onf — n . , (a,) The free use of text-books and other materials and school equipment; (b) Free or low-cost meals; (c) Free or reduced-cost transportation; and (d) Maintenance allowances during the period of compulsory education and student aid to enable young persons to continue, subject to proof of merit, their vocational, technical, or higher education beyond the compulsory period. I). Apprenticeship mid In-plant Training 17. (1) Special consideration should be given to the development _of apprenticeship for young workers, and in particular to measures for making apprenticeship fully effective in accordance with the principles laid down in the Apprenticeship Recommendation, 1939, and in paragraph 33 of the Employment (Transition from War to Peace) Recommendation, 1944, with a view to ensuring sustained improvement in the standards and methods of apprenticeship and' the widening of the responsibilities of public authorities in this field. , (2) Special efforts should be made, in collaboration with employers' and workers' organizations, to develop systematic arrangements for ensuring in accordance with paragraph 34 of the Employment (Transition from War to Peace) Recommendation, 1944, that all young workers employed in any undertaking have an opportunity to acquire a specialized technical training or to improve their skill and to acquaint themselves with the operations of the undertaking as a whole. IY. Admission to Employment A. Regulation of Minimum Age 18. The Conference, reaffirms its duty to promote the abolition of child labour, and, convinced that it is in the best interests of children m order to assure an adequate preparation for their future to fix the minimum age for admission to employment as high as possible for all categories of employment, — (a) Invites all members, to ratify as soon as possible either the four Conventions fixing at fourteen years the minimum age of admission to industrial employment, employment at sea, non-industrial employment, and employment in agriculture, or preferably, as regards the first three. categories of employment, the revised Conventions in which the minimum age for industrial employment, ' employment at sea, and non-industrial employment is raised to fifteen years; and (b) Urges them to take as their objective the gradual raising to sixteen years of the minimum age of admission to employment. 19. (1) When regulating the minimum age of admission, consideration should be given to the following principles, as an appropriate basis of regulation. (2) The gradual raising of the minimum age should be accompanied, at each successive stage, by simultaneous measures for assuring the maintenance of children in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 5 above and for organizing compulsory education until at least the same age, in accordance with the provisions of paragraphs 9 (2) and 10 above. (3) So far as possible, the minimum age should be fixed simultaneously at the same level for the various categories of occupations, and especially for industrial and non-industrial employments carried on mainly in urban

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