Will pupils following the various curricula remain side by side in the same school, or will they be separated into different institutions? It is possible that in London and the larger towns separate technical and commercial schools of secondary grade will be created to work side by side with the secondary schools of the present type. The anomalous Central Schools of to-day can scarcely remain a permanent feature of our system: they might well be converted into schools of fully secondary character with either a commercial or a technical bias. In the smaller areas which can support only a single institution for higher training the varied courses will be pursued in the same building. Such an arrangement will, no doubt, present difficulties in organisation, but it will have a considerable advantage in the fact that free transfer of pupils from one course to another will be possible.
What of the pupils who are judged unfit for education of a secondary type? Those who are likely to profit by some sort of further teaching will not be dismissed at the age of fourteen to the workshop or the office; but it will be recognised that their interests can be best served by giving them training of a frankly vocational character. To meet the needs of those who propose to enter trades there will be organised large numbers of trade schools in conjunction with local industries. Here, for two years or more, students will be prepared for a definite occupation, and will remain under cultural and disciplinary influences. Junior Technical Schools of this nature have already been firmly established during the last thirty years, and in London trade-classes exist for silversmithing, book-production, furnishing, dressmaking, tailoring, engineering, and so on. At present, however, half the total number of Junior Technical School places provided by the county boroughs throughout the country are in London: we may look forward to a wide extension of technical school facilities in the other industrial areas during the next few years.
The effective organisation of trade-schools will entail a solution of the problem of apprenticeship. The apprenticeship-system has long been obsolete: it is condemned educationally because it involves the transference of the pupil from the school to the workshop at too early an age, and it is ineffective industrially because under modern factory-conditions there is no certainty that the apprentice will even receive proper technical training. The system is already dead in many trades, and in others it is kept alive only to enable the trade unions to limit the number of entrants into the industry. It cannot be long, however, before common needs force education and industry into some sort of concordat. The industrial firms need skilled workers; the educationists want those skilled workers to be trained in such a way that they may derive educational benefit from their technical pursuits. To meet the difficulty there are two obvious possibilities. The whole apprentice-system might be abolished, and the training of skilled workers might be carried out entirely in technical schools organised on the lines of the écoles professionelles of France, which resemble factories in their equipment and which turn out fully-trained workers after a three years’ course. If, on the other hand, the rule of apprenticeship is retained, it should be possible to substitute education in Junior Technical Schools for the first two years of apprenticeship. Steps of this kind have already been taken in London, where it is usual for young workers to have their apprenticeship shortened by a period corresponding to their training in a trade school. But, of course, further advances in this direction can be taken only with the co-operation of the trade unions concerned. This may cause difficulty. Somewhat strangely, the educational spokesmen of the trade unions seem so much concerned about securing a university education for the sons of the “workers” that they have little interest in the matter of craft-instruction. But perhaps this attitude of the trade union leaders is no more strange than that of the employers who talk loudly of the need for increased efficiency if British manufacturers are to compete in the markets of the world, and yet do little or nothing to ensure that their young workers shall be given adequate training for the work they are to perform.
But we have still to consider the future of boys and girls of low mentality who, on leaving the primary school, will normally enter unskilled or semi-skilled occupations, and who are not likely to profit by full-time vocational training. It is these who present the most difficult problem to the educationist. It is hard to find the right way of approach to such children even under school-conditions; it is far harder to exert effective teaching-influence over them when they have been freed from disciplinary restraints. Yet it is imperative for the health of the community that young workers of this type should not be allowed to pass entirely out of educational control as soon as they leave the elementary school. For them, it would seem, the aid of Mr. Fisher’s Act will once more have to be invoked, and compulsory Continuation Schools will be established. At these classes the object will be not so much to teach the students any specific subjects as to keep them under disciplinary influences and to develop in them the sense of personal and civic responsibility. The short experience gained from the few continuation schools established immediately after 1918 made it clear that giving much purely cultural teaching to workers of low type in unskilled jobs, however desirable, is actually impracticable. Nor is it generally possible to give much direct vocational instruction. Physical training and handwork must be made important parts of the courses, and good work can be done through the formation of students’ clubs. In fact, those who have charge of Continuation classes will have to regard themselves less as teachers than as welfare-workers.
The scheme of development which has been mapped out clearly demands the creation of a link between education and industry such as does not at present exist. Boys and girls who, through lack of initiative or of any special predilection, have not found for themselves suitable employment by the time they are due to leave school will not be allowed to drift into the first blind-alley occupation that presents itself. The education authorities will have made full surveys of local industrial and business requirements and will thus be able to indicate suitable openings. Moreover, account will be taken of the applicant’s special abilities in recommending any particular post to him. The question of vocational guidance has for some years attracted a good deal of attention in America, and a considerable amount of work has been done in this direction. In this country, many local educational authorities (in particular, the London boroughs) are attempting to carry out schemes of juvenile vocational guidance through the After-Care Committees and the Juvenile Advisory Committee of the Employment Bureaux. In London, too, the Headmasters of the Secondary Schools have formed an Employment Committee which puts pupils in touch with firms who have vacancies.
More important in this connection is the investigation recently carried out by the Industrial Fatigue Research Board in conjunction with the National Institute of Industrial Psychology. Under the direction of Dr Cyril Burt a careful study was made of all the children (to the number of a hundred) due to leave three selected London schools within a period of twelve months. All data obtainable from the schools were collected, the children were subjected to mental tests, the homes were visited, and each child was personally interviewed. In the light of the evidence thus obtained specific vocational recommendations were made. After an interval of two years the investigators again interviewed the children in their homes in order to test the results of the recommendations. It appeared that the children who had entered the industries suggested to them had proved more efficient than their fellows, and over 80 per cent. of them declared that they were satisfied with their position and prospects. On the other hand, of those who obtained employment different from the kind recommended, less than 40 per cent. were satisfied. The value of this experiment is, of course, limited by the smallness of its scale, but the results are certainly encouraging. One point that has been made clear is the need for full information as to the requirements of the various trades.
Such efforts at linking the schools with the office and the workshop are at present tentative and sporadic; but they are significant of future developments,—developments which will be hastened by the growing determination during these years of trade depression to prevent the waste and deterioration of our youths, so far as it can be prevented by better organisation. There can be little doubt that within the next few years we shall be forced, if not by practical wisdom, at least by economic necessity, into creating a universal scheme which shall relieve the employers of the need for haphazard advertisement in recruiting their junior staffs, and which shall ensure that everything possible is done to facilitate the entry of a youth into that particular job in which he can do work of most value to himself and to the community.