Youth's Opportunity (1945)

This was one of a series of pamphlets in which the post-war Labour government set out its plans for the education system following the 1944 Education Act.

The complete document is shown in this single web page. You can scroll through it or use the following links to go to the various sections.

I Introduction (page 3)
II Problems of planning (6)
III Organisation (i) (12)
IV Organisation (ii) (15)
V Premises (18)
VI Staffing (22)
VII Internal problems (26)
VIII Curriculum (32)
IX Some suggestions (38)
X Special needs of girls (43)
XI Special needs of rural areas (46)
XII Conclusion (48)

Appendices

I Juvenile employment statistics (49)
II Distribution of occupied population (facing 49)
III Statistics of school-leavers (50)
IV Sections 43-46 of the 1944 Act (51)

The text of Youth's Opportunity was prepared by Derek Gillard and uploaded on 30 January 2017.

Youth's Opportunity (1945)
Further Education in County Colleges
Ministry of Education Pamphlet No. 3

London: His Majesty's Stationery Office 1945
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.


[cover]


[Inside front cover]

CONTENTS

PAGE
I INTRODUCTION3
II PROBLEMS OF PLANNING6
III ORGANISATION (i)12
IV ORGANISATION (ii)15
V PREMISES18
VI STAFFING22
VII INTERNAL PROBLEMS26
VIII CURRICULUM32
IX SOME SUGGESTIONS38
X THE SPECIAL NEEDS OF GIRLS43
XI THE SPECIAL NEEDS OF RURAL AREAS46
XII CONCLUSION48

APPENDICES
I STATISTICS OF JUVENILE EMPLOYMENT49
II INDUSTRIAL AND REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF OCCUPIED POPULATION facing page49
III STATISTICS OF SCHOOL-LEAVERS50
IV SECTIONS 43-46 OF THE EDUCATION ACT, 194451




[title page]

YOUTH'S OPPORTUNITY

Further Education in
County Colleges




MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
PAMPHLET No. 3




LONDON
HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE
1945


[page 2]


PREFATORY NOTE

THE establishment of County Colleges will be one of the most important of the many tasks set before Local Education Authorities by the new Education Act. If this development, when taken in hand, is to be made fully effective, it will demand both careful planning and imaginative vision, not least to secure the willing co-operation of those who are most concerned - the young people themselves.

The suggestions in this pamphlet are based on the recommendations of a Committee composed of H.M. Inspectors and administrative officers of the Department. They attempt to offer no dogmatic solution of the many problems with which both administrators and teachers will be faced. It is believed, however, that their conclusions will be found of value and to offer some assistance to those who will be responsible for the planning and the operation of this new service.



[page 3]

YOUTH'S OPPORTUNITY

Further Education in County Colleges

I INTRODUCTION

1. COMPULSION has been introduced slowly into the English educational system, and each new extension has been keenly and sometimes hotly debated. The motives of those who have supported it have been various but they have derived from two main impulses, one, the conviction that more education would increase the happiness and welfare of the individuals to whom it was given and the other, the conviction that more education would be for the good of the country and of the communities that compose it. These views are not opposed to each other; they are indeed complementary and it is when their forces have been combined that the most rapid advances have been made.

2. The Education Act, 1944 making part-time attendance, normally on one day a week, at a college of further education compulsory for all young people between the ages of 15 (later 16) and 18 who are not in full-time attendance elsewhere, is supported by holders of both the views mentioned. On the one hand it is felt that no wage-earning occupation, however skilful or absorbing (and there are many which are neither) can by itself be a proper education for those who have left school at 15; that young people need to be kept in touch with the life, the discipline, the teaching and the outlook of an educational institution for some years after they have become wage-earners, and that their personal happiness will be increased and their lives made richer by such a contact. On the other hand, experience has shown that the well-trained and educated make the best workers; that those who maintain contact with organised education make, on the whole, the most responsible citizens, and that complete withdrawal from education at 14 has led to much of the effort of the elementary school being wasted.

3. The country is not likely to forget what it owes to the steadfastness, the enthusiasm and the courage of its young people during the war. The demands of the post-war world will be considerable and will be no less difficult to meet than those of the immediate past and present.

4. The task of establishing a complete system of compulsory further education is likely to be a heavy one. It will require the co-operation of many groups and interests and it must be undertaken boldly and imaginatively. The purpose of this pamphlet is to suggest the lines on which the scheme should be planned and initiated. Before this


[page 4]

can be done it is necessary (and it may be a sobering experience) to examine briefly a similar attempt made a quarter of a century ago.

DAY CONTINUATION SCHOOLS

5. In 1915 Mr. H.A.L. Fisher, then President of the Board of Education, introduced an Education Bill into the House of Commons. The Bill became law and has been generally known as the Fisher Act. It placed upon local education authorities the duty of setting up and maintaining Day Continuation Schools for all young people (with some exceptions) between the ages of 14 and 18. Physical training, medical inspection and suitable courses of study were to be provided free and compulsory attendance was not to be required between the hours of seven o'clock in the evening and eight in the morning. Attendance could at the option of the authority be confined to 280 hours a year (instead of the standard 320 hours) during the first seven years of the scheme. The Board of Education were given power to prescribe by regulation the hours during which the employment of young persons must be suspended for the purpose of attendance at a day continuation school.

6. The exceptions mentioned above were as follows: those who had reached the age of 14 before the day appointed for the opening of the school; all those who were in full-time attendance at some other place of education or who had obtained certain recognised qualifications; and, for the first seven years of the scheme, those between the ages of 16 and 18.

7. By June, 1921, the scheme was well under way and by the end of the year 95,000 students were in attendance at the schools, but a year later all compulsory attendance, save at Rugby, had ceased. To-day Rugby is still the only compulsory day continuation school in the country. There are thirty voluntary schools.

8. The history of the day continuation school movement has been written elsewhere but, since there may he some readers of this pamphlet who are not familiar with that history, it will be useful to review briefly the causes of the failure of this part of the Fisher Act. The circumstances in which the Bill was introduced were in many respects similar to those of to-day. The country had passed through four years of war which had brought to light various deficiencies in the education of its young people. Some of these deficiencies were causing widespread concern and the people of Britain were looking forward to an era of peace, reconstruction and reform. If compulsory part-time education is to be a success in the future it will be necessary to avoid the mistakes and misconceptions which led to the collapse of the system twenty-three years ago.

9. The first and most obvious cause of failure was that the appointed day for opening was not the same throughout the country. Each authority was given its own, and the scheme might thus be in operation


[page 5]

in one area and not in the area immediately adjoining. The Act compelling attendance applied to the place of residence and not to the place of employment. Consequently an employer would find that some of his young employees had to be released for attendance, while to others, who lived in another area, the Act did not apply. Young people who lived near the area boundaries would find that, while they themselves were obliged to attend a day continuation school their friends who lived in the next street were free to work a full week. Thus the former were at a considerable advantage in obtaining employment. This inevitably led to the schools being unpopular with the employers, who could make no reliable forecast of the availability of their employees, and who were at a disadvantage with firms in adjacent areas where the scheme was not operating, and with the employees themselves and their parents, who felt that they were not being fairly treated. This difficulty has been avoided under the 1944 Act, which provides for a single appointed day for the country as a whole.

10. The second cause was the lack of suitable teachers. The new scheme naturally attracted many who were enthusiastic and ready to experiment with new methods and approaches, but there was no carefully thought out course of training for them and few of the assistant staff had adequate experience of working, boys and girls or of their working environment. Added to this was the reluctance of many successful teachers in other types of education to transfer to work that was being established in unpromising conditions.

11. The third cause was the makeshift nature of the buildings in which many of the schools were established. Old Sunday schools and disused elementary schools were rented and proved to be quite unsuitable for the purpose, not only because the accommodation was far from being what was needed, but also because they were unattractive to the young people, who felt that they were, in the most literal sense, being sent "back to school". There was no sense of going forward to something new, no feeling of growing up that a specially designed building might have helped to foster.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC OPINION

12. The three causes mentioned were undoubtedly important and formidable in their effects, but it is possible that those effects might have been discounted if they had been only temporary, had there not been a fourth cause of failure which led inevitably to the scheme being abandoned. Public opinion was not really convinced that the scheme ought to be carried through. Many employers, managers and foremen found that it upset their arrangements and habits and demanded a readjustment of their working plans that they resented having to make. The public were accustomed to compulsory education ceasing at 14 and to the tradition that the ambitious and determined should devote their spare time to such further education as they wanted. There was no widespread feeling that to cut off at 14 from the influence


[page 6]

of study and corporate life all save a minority of the population was to waste human material and to nullify much of the work of the elementary schools. There was no general consciousness of the needs and difficulties of the young worker. In addition, the trade slump of 1921 came very suddenly and caused widespread difficulties. Ways of retrenchment had to be found and it was all but inevitable that the Day Continuation Schools were among the "economies". They were new and untried and the general public saw them disappear without much more than passing regret.

13. In planning now for the future of compulsory further education we have, then, mainly negative experience on which to draw. What to avoid is much clearer than what to pursue. On the positive side we have the experience of Rugby, which for 25 years has been operating a statutory scheme though only up to the age of 16; the experience of the voluntary schools, including the evening schools, and the experience of compulsory schemes in other countries. Voluntary and, more particularly, foreign experience, however, must be used with caution. There is a fundamental difference between the student who comes to school of his own free will and the one who comes because he must, a difference that is of special importance in the early days of the scheme before attendance has become an accepted tradition, and its benefits self-evident. As for experience of other countries there are plenty of examples to show that what suits one does nor suit all, and that what is taken for granted in one part of the world may be revolutionary in another.

14. Because of the considerations mentioned above the scheme suggested in this pamphlet is in some parts definite and categorical and in others tentative and deliberately inconclusive. On the one hand it provides for specific types of accommodation and a carefully organised teacher training scheme, and on the other it recognises the necessity for experiment and an empirical approach to the problems of curriculum and internal organisation.

II PROBLEMS OF PLANNING

15. In this chapter an account will be found of some of the most important problems which face the planners of a compulsory part-time system of education. No apology should be needed for placing the facts of adolescence at the head of the list. It is important, at the outset, to be reminded of the kind of human material for which the scheme will be planned, if only because it is all too easy to become absorbed in the details of an administrative machine and to forget those in whose interests the machine is going to work.


[page 7]

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ADOLESCENCE

16. Much study has been devoted to the characteristics of adolescence and much written matter on the subject is easily available. All that it is proposed to do here is to summarise those facts which are likely to be of special importance in a part-time compulsory system. Fundamentally, of course, there is no difference between the adolescent who attends a secondary school full-time and one who attends a college on one day a week. The same physiological changes and the same religious, emotional and social problems affect them both. But there are secondary differences which must not be overlooked. The boy or girl attending a full-time school is usually there for a purpose which is more or less clear to him or her, and "school" is an important and absorbing part of their lives. They become rapidly familiar with its personalities and traditions, and they belong to a fairly homogeneous group of people with some degree of academic interest and verbal ability in common. The young people for whom the new colleges will provide will have a far wider range of intelligence, much more variable ability and will include many for whom further education will, at the outset, have little attraction. The college will not be automatically a major factor in their lives. On most days each week they will be earning their living and may regard their time at the college as an infringement on their liberty. The colleges will have to be organised so as to arouse a very different attitude. They will have to face the fact that their students will be far less ready to take their ways for granted and far less responsive to their traditions than the students in full-time institutions.

17. For these reasons it is particularly important that all who are concerned with the part-time scheme should understand the nature of adolescent development. The physiological factors are less simple than is sometimes supposed. The bodily changes of puberty occur at different ages, not only as between boys and girls, but as between individuals of the same sex and at different speeds. This at once makes chronological age-grouping much less easy to work than during childhood. If it is necessary (and no doubt it often will be) to group all the 15-year-olds, for example, together, it will be equally necessary to recognise, and allow for, the wide disparity in development that such a group will inevitably show, Furthermore, adolescents are excessively conscious of any deviation, fancied or real, from the normal in themselves. Late or premature physical development may cause acute anxiety in a boy or girl and the teachers must expect to find symptoms of this anxiety in their students appearing as strain, conflict and instability of various kinds. No sort of homogeneity should be looked for or, by implication, demanded, in an adolescent group.

18. Environmental factors are of great importance. First, adolescence is the period of break-away from the family. This break-away is far from being the simple process which is to be observed among the lower animals. In the first place there is rarely an actual break. The


[page 8]

adolescent continues to live in the same home as his family and to be to a large extent dependent economically upon his parents and, to a varying extent, under their control and subject to their wishes. At the same time he expresses a growing desire for independence, and shows a determination to go his own way. This, again, is not a simple process. The self-assertive, independent feelings frequently alternate with the opposite desire to regress to a more childish dependent relationship with the parents. In his attempt to be independent and "grown-up" he is constantly puzzled, hurt and obscurely frightened, and this is reflected in his behaviour which is often so bewildering and even distressing to his parents. The attitude of his parents profoundly affects this growing-up process and may vary between a desperate attempt to preserve the old dependent childish relationship and a tendency to throw up the sponge, as it were, and to take no further interest in the child's doings, two extremes equally inappropriate to the real need of the child.

19. A second characteristic of adolescents is the disposition to form groups and to conform slavishly to the demands of group opinion in such matters as dress, adornment, speech, behaviour, and mannerism. The less homogeneous the main group the more the tendency shows itself to form sub-groups or cliques within the main group. The chief importance of this characteristic, taken together with the break-away mentioned above, so far as the colleges are concerned, is that the students will belong to at least three social groups, the family, the work group and the college group, each making its demands upon him. This will certainly mean a conflict and a considerable difficulty of adjustment, which may come out in the form of an attachment to one group accompanied by an aversion to one or more of the others. This is a situation which must be foreseen and provided for and which will need careful, sympathetic handling.

20. The student will be adjusting himself not only to his groups at work and at college but also to his job, to the community at large and - to life. Adjustment to the job includes far more than learning a technique or a procedure. It is accompanied by a realisation of the meaning of economic independence and of inferiority in skill or status or income to others in the work group. Adjustment to the community means a growing consciousness of the complexity of modern civilisation and is often accompanied by a sudden interest in politics. Adjustment to life, the formulation of such questions as "Who am I ?" "Why am I here?" is frequently made by a strong development of the religious sense. Primitive initiation rituals were crude attempts to formalise these adjustments and it is significant that adolescents often invent initiation ceremonies for themselves.

21. In a full-time school the adjustments are easier. The adjustment to the job is postponed while that to the community is less insistent. Furthermore, intellectual achievement and success at games provide satisfactions for the students which ease the strain. But in the colleges


[page 9]

the students will be bearing the full brunt of these various compulsions to adjust themselves, and they will present a special and by no means easy problem to those whose responsibility they will be.

22. The above summary may explain why the behaviour of adolescents is sometimes, to the adult eye, so unaccountable. The process of growing up, of becoming an adult instead of a child, is not an easy one and the apparent contradictions in behaviour are no, more than symptoms of the difficulty. Impatience with the symptoms is natural and not always to be avoided; but understanding of their causes is essential. A teacher of adolescents has no business to be surprised when he finds them alternately resentful of his interference and desirous of confiding in him, self-assertive and yet shy and sensitive, wanting help but unable to ask for it. He will not be surprised so long as he understands the people he is dealing with and is concerned above all with their interests. Like all others who have done this he will be rewarded by loyalty and affection generously given.

THE NEEDS OF THE YOUNG STUDENT

23. If the first step in planning a part-time education system is to recognise and understand the characteristics of adolescents, the next is so to plan that their needs are met. How this may be done will be discussed in detail later, but a brief statement of certain needs will not be out of place here and now. First, the student needs social experience and participation in a community life. He must feel that he has a place in the community and he will appreciate activities and responsibilities which give him status and prestige. Self-esteem is a strong motive and it must be made use of.

24. Secondly, he will require a satisfying relationship with the adult members of the community. The teacher-pupil relationship is not adequate, nor, altogether, is the kind of relationship that obtains between tutor and student at a University. The relationship must combine the friendly and the co-operative with the authoritative. It must make the student feel at once that he has been promoted to a more grown-up relationship than was possible at school and that he is in contact with adults whom he can rely on and respect.

25. Thirdly, the student must feel that he is attending the college for a well-defined purpose, which means that he must follow a curriculum which is relevant to his needs and interests and which provides the greatest possible opportunity for individual choice and initiative. A rigid choice or classification of material for study and a formal or academic approach to that material would defeat the aims of the system and create resentment and frustration instead of initiative and self-discipline.

26. This short list of needs is of course incomplete. The adolescent has many other needs, religious, intellectual, emotional, economic, and vocational, some of which will be discussed later, but the satisfaction


[page 10]

of all of them is to a greater or lesser extent dependent upon the satisfaction of the three mentioned above.

PHYSICAL WELFARE

27. There is one need not included in the list just given, which affects the planning of the scheme to such an extent that it must be specially mentioned here. No system of education can be considered adequate which does not provide for the physical welfare of the students. At present only a small proportion of those who have left school come automatically under medical inspection. Those who enter factory employment must be examined by a doctor soon after they begin work and they can be rejected for that particular employment on the results of the examination or accepted subject to periodical re-examination. Large sections of industry, including agriculture, building and commerce lie outside the scope of these arrangements. Certain industries, notably mining, are beginning special entrance examination, usually with some particular aim in view, such as the prevention of silicosis. Medical examinations of adolescents are held for entrants to the Air Training Corps and the Sea Cadets. Neither the Army Cadet Force nor the Girls Training Corps at present makes any general provision for the medical inspection of entrants to their units. It is clear that the country cannot afford so incomplete and haphazard a system. In the Education Act of 1944 the medical inspection and treatment of students in compulsory part-time attendance is made a duty of local education authorities. The medical and administrative details of the scheme proposed need not be discussed here. They will depend, in part at least, upon the ultimate pattern assumed by the health services of the country as a whole.

EXTENT AND TYPE OF EMPLOYMENT

28. The remaining problems of planning are of a very different nature from those that we have been considering hitherto, and they arise from the facts of employment and the distribution of the population. The statistics which reveal these facts are given in Appendices I and III. They show first of all that in the year 1939 about half a million boys and girls entered insurable employment for the first time, of whom 450,000 come direct from elementary schools. The occupations that took the largest proportion were the distributive trades which accounted for nearly a quarter of the whole, engineering and shipbuilding which took a quarter of the boys and textiles and clothing which took a quarter of the girls.

29. The second important set of facts revealed by the statistics is the proportion of workers in the various industries who are under 18 and therefore within the scope of the scheme proposed. In round figures about 11 per cent of the male workers in engineering, 7 per cent in mining, 6 per cent in building and contracting and 9 per cent in agriculture are under 18. In the distributive trades 19 per cent of the males and 24 per cent of the females, and in transport and communication 8 per cent of the males and 13 per cent of the


[page 11]

females are under 18. These figures show the magnitude and variety of the provision that will be required.

30. It would be useful to know in advance how many of the entrants to the colleges will be engaged in skilled and how many in unskilled occupations. Nothing more than a rough estimate is possible. Indentured apprenticeship is comparatively rare to-day and no exact definition of skilled employment is possible in modern conditions of production. It appears reasonable to assume that no more than one in three young workers enters an occupation which offers an opportunity of learning a skill or for advancement in his particular occupation. This is a useful reminder of the fact that a very considerable proportion of the students at the colleges will not be likely to need courses of work directly connected with present and future employment. They must not be deprived of such courses if they can profit by them, but many will neither need nor desire them, and it is well at the outset to recognise this fact, which will be discussed more fully later on.

DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION

31. The problem created by the variety of occupations and different degrees of skill involved is complicated by the possibility of juvenile unemployment. This problem, which in 1934 was tackled by junior instruction centres, can now be more effectively dealt with by associating the education of the unemployed juvenile with that of the juvenile in employment. There should be, of course, a very close link between the colleges and the juvenile employment agencies.

32. The distribution of the population creates special problems. Quite apart from the varying density as between, say, London and S.E. Lancashire at one end and parts of Cumberland and Devon at the opposite end of the scale, the importance of different industries varies from place to place. For example, the number of miners in the West Riding is almost as great as that in South Wales, but the relative importance of mining is much greater in the latter than in the former. Appendix II, which is based on a diagram published by P.E.P. (Political and Economic Planning) in 1939 in "A Report on the Location of Industry in Great Britain", shows how the numbers of the occupied population vary from region to region and as between occupations in each region. These variations mean that a scheme of compulsory part-time education must be planned so as to provide for widely different local conditions and needs and that no single proposal can suit all areas. In the proposals which follow an attempt has been made to find solutions for different types of area represented by populations varying from below 10,000 in the catchment area to 500,000.

33. There remain for mention two special problems: first how to ensure part-time education for those employed at sea, and secondly how to meet the needs of those living in rural areas which may be not only thinly populated, but also affected by the seasonal demands of agriculture. Suggestions for dealing with these problems are made in a later chapter.


[page 12]

III ORGANISATION (i)

34. The principle upon which the proposals about to be described are based is that the field of further education is one. It would be a grave mistake to set up a scheme of compulsory part-time education which has no means of being in close touch with full-time education or with the various voluntary activities existing for the same range of young people. Part-time day release by industry for the purpose of technical, commercial and art courses, part-time evening courses of study beyond the age of 18, the work done in youth centres and community centres, and full-time courses conducted, under the regulations for further education, are all part of further education, and it is important that any scheme proposed for compulsory part-time education should set up no administrative or educational barriers between the various partners in the field. It is important, also, that there should be no artificial segregation of different grades of employee, no sharp divisions, with their dangerous suggestion of sheep and goats, into vocational and non-vocational students.

ATTENDANCE AND HOLIDAYS

35. The procedure by which the county colleges will be established, the date of their opening and the regulations governing attendance are indicated in Sections 41-45 of the Education Act of 1944.* Section 42(3) makes attendance compulsory for one whole day or two half-days in each of forty-four weeks in every year or, in certain cases, for eight continuous weeks or two periods of four continuous weeks in every year. The former case, which will be the rule, gives eight weeks of holiday. The holiday is shorter than the twelve weeks prescribed as the maximum for publicly maintained primary and secondary schools. It is, however, very much longer than the present industrial holiday and there will thus be a period of about six weeks in every year when the colleges will be closed and most of the students will be at work. It is hoped that the young workers will have the day's holiday a week that will thus be gained and will not be required to go to work on days when they would have been at college if the college had been open.

STAFFING RATIO

36. The variety of the curricula to be followed and the practical nature of much of the work to be done in the colleges will make necessary a staffing ratio rather more generous than has been the practice in some other kinds of schools, if the work is to be done efficiently, economically and with the enthusiasm and freshness that are indispensable to its success. It is suggested therefore that groups

*The text of these sections is given in full in Appendix IV.


[page 13]

of students should not average more than twenty, though there may, of course, be occasions, musical and otherwise, on which large gatherings will be appropriate.

37. It will be desirable to make provision for both sexes in the same premises. Some of the activities of the colleges would lose much in value and reality if the sexes were segregated, though there will be others for which segregation will be desirable. There may be special circumstances, as, for example, in works schools, in which it would be necessary to organise the institutions on a single-sex basis, but such circumstances are exceptional and the reason for them will need to be well substantiated.

38. The question whether the colleges are to be in the areas in which the students live, or those in which they work, or again, whether they shall be, in some cases, attached to factories, is one about which some difference of opinion is likely to be expressed. It may be well, therefore, to give briefly the arguments for and against these various types of college.

WORKS SCHOOLS

39. In the past a number of far-sighted firms have conducted their own day continuation schools. Sometimes the provision has been made entirely by the firm, with the aid of grants from the Ministry of Education, and sometimes the firm has provided the premises and the local education authority has equipped, maintained and staffed the school. The best of such schools have much to be said for them. They are undoubtedly convenient from the industrial point of view. In some respects they have disciplinary advantages, and the work done in them may gain in reality and unity of purpose from being closely associated with the works and from the common occupational background of the students. Such schools may, however, have some serious disadvantages. In the first place only a very large firm can maintain a school large enough to carry a staff adequate both in number and in the variety of their qualifications. A firm employing 5,000 workers might well have about 500 between the ages of 15 and 18. This would mean 100 students at the school each day. Even this number is really below the minimum required for satisfactory organisation. There are, however, few firms in England and Wales which employ anything like as many workers as this and thousands which employ less than 100. The works-school can, therefore, only be an exceptional case. It may also be argued that in such schools the students tend to be overdominated by the interests of the firm and that it is good for them to have a change from the industrial atmosphere and to enjoy the company and the points of view of students from different occupations.

40. Under the Education Act of 1944 all county colleges will be established and maintained by local education authorities, and compulsory attendance at a works-school will only be possible as an exemption from attendance at a college. Such exemption will only


[page 14]

be given when the works-school can satisfy the educational requirements both of premises and staffing and compare favourably in all respects with a college.

LOCATION OF COLLEGES IN URBAN AND RURAL AREAS

41. Whether the colleges are to be in the work area or in the home area of the students must depend a good deal upon circumstances. In thinly-populated areas the question settles itself. The college, where not residential, must be central. In areas which adopt the two half-days plan rather than the very much better whole-day plan, the colleges must almost inevitably be in the work area. There is little doubt, however, that, wherever possible, the home-based college is to be preferred. In a large city it would be much easier and cheaper to establish colleges in the outer suburbs than to group them together in an already congested centre. Such an arrangement would assist the meeting together of young people employed in various walks of life, both social and vocational, and co-operation with the youth service and with other community activities is best contrived in the home-based college.

42. There are some types of young worker whose needs cannot be met either by works-schools, or by colleges near their homes or near where they work. In the thinly-populated rural areas, which will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter XI, it will be necessary to provide residential colleges with full-time courses of eight weeks or of two periods of four weeks. In some rural areas where the population is greater, there might be a combination of residential and day colleges, in others again a day college in a centrally placed market town. In such areas there may be strong reasons advanced for making the college an annexe to an existing secondary school so that the two could share the more costly forms of provision such as a gymnasium and a playing field. These reasons may conceivably be decisive but such an arrangement should not be regarded as ideal, for the young wage earner will not relish the prospect of going back to school. Experience in day continuation schools has shown that it is psychologically unsound to establish such schemes either in, or in association with, school premises. Where economy makes some kind of combination desirable a joint college and community centre would probably be a better solution.

43. It will be noted that purely residential colleges may only be in use for their primary purpose for a part of the year. They could serve a number of useful purposes at other times, as adult "schools" and holiday camps, and they might, if properly equipped and organised, be valuable adjuncts to agricultural education.

44. The young seafarer is another type who cannot be fitted into the ordinary scheme. The problem of his education is now being considered by the Merchant Navy Training Board who have already issued one general report on education and training, and also by the technical education committee of the fishing industry.


[page 15]

CONTINUED ATTENDANCE AFTER EIGHTEEN

45. In the next chapter more detailed proposals for the kind of provision needed in various types of area will be found. It may be well to emphasise, before going further, that attendance at the colleges will not, it is hoped, finish abruptly when the student reaches the age of 18. Every effort should be made to encourage continued attendance, either in extended periods of part-time release or in the student's own time. Such attendance might be for general or vocational education. Some of it may be in the evenings for recreation. The important point is the principle, stated at the beginning of this section, that the whole field of further education is one field. The tendency in the past has been to think in terms of technical, commercial and art colleges, of women's institutes, junior technical schools, adult education and so on. The result has been misleading and confusing to the very people for whom the provision is made as well as to the general public. A scheme organised on the lines outlined in the next section should, with proper housing and staffing, give not only dignity and status to compulsory part-time education, but cohesion and vitality to the whole system of further education.

IV ORGANISATION (ii)

46. The principle being accepted that the field of further education is one and hence that compulsory part-time education must be regarded as part of it and not as something separate and self-contained, the implications of that principle must now be examined.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COUNTY COLLEGES AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS

47. In the first place the provision of county colleges should be planned in the closest possible relationship with existing or prospective institutions of further education. This is necessary, not only to avoid uneconomical duplication of staff and buildings but on educational grounds. It is in the light of this that the following paragraphs should be read. While the needs of all students at county colleges must be impartially met, it will, in particular, be necessary to provide for the needs of those who wish to follow courses connected with their present or future calling. Even for these young people, however, the calls on the colleges will be restricted by certain conditions. The more advanced courses which they will follow will need specialised equipment in workshop or laboratory which it would be impossible to install in every one of the colleges. Again, the demand for work of this kind comes mostly from industrial and heavily populated areas and even there it is proportionately small. It is important that any institution at which young people are directed to attend should be capable of carrying not only general but also vocational education up


[page 16]

to the age of 18. There will, however, be a few students who will require some vocational training for which special equipment and expert teaching are necessary. These will have to be provided for at a central college of further education, where they should be organised as a group and where full provision must be made for all aspects of the curriculum appropriate to county colleges.

STANDARDS OF PROVISION IN RELATION TO DENSITY OF POPULATION

48. In the most thinly-populated rural areas with less than 10,000 people within a radius of five miles the college must almost inevitably be residential or partly residential. In such areas it is probable that there will be only a limited demand for additional courses in technical and other subjects, for courses, that is, other than those taken by the general body of students. As has already been said these colleges will be admirable centres for a variety of educational and social purposes during the time when they are not in use as county colleges.

49. In areas containing from 10,000 to 25,000 people within the five mile radius, a single non-residential college; whether combined or not with a community centre, should meet the needs. In such places it will be natural to give facilities in the college for a reasonable amount of technical and other forms of further education, but the college need not necessarily be staffed or equipped to give all the vocational courses required. If it were not far distant from other centres of technical, art and commercial education it would probably be better to transfer students to them rather than to attempt courses which might only be for a handful.

50. Areas containing from 25,000 to 50,000 within the 5 mile radius, a figure that would produce about 400 students a day at the county college, could also be served by a single college. In such areas a considerably wider range of further vocational education could reasonably be provided for students, but even here it should be permissible for students to travel to larger centres if they required higher grade or more specialised forms of vocational study than their college could supply.

51. It will be realised that in districts of these sizes, that is of between 10,000 and 50,000 catchment, the county colleges should as far as possible be made self-supporting in the matter of the vocational education required by the bulk of students up to the age of 18. Only exceptionally should such students have to be transferred to larger centres.

52. In areas containing appreciably more than 50,000 people within the radius mentioned more than one college will be needed. A population of 100,000 produces about 800 students, of 250,000, 2,000 students and so on, on each of the five days. For these denser areas it seems best to establish, or make use of, one central college or group of colleges (technology, art, commerce, etc.) dealing with further education as a whole at the higher levels and an appropriate number


[page 17]

of branch colleges in association with it. Thus an area of 100,000 would require a central college and one or two branch colleges, while one of 500,000 would probably need six or more of the latter.

CENTRAL AND BRANCH COLLEGES

53. The primary functions of the central college or colleges will be to provide for: (a) work of the higher grades, (b) courses requiring large and very expensive equipment which it would be impossible to justify installing in a number of branch colleges, and (c) courses necessary for a comparatively small total number of students employed in a particular industry in the area which the college serves.

54. Whether there are separate central colleges for each branch of further education or separate departments of a single college, the facilities of all of them should be at the disposal of all types of work carried on in central and branch colleges, which should be regarded as forming one group. The larger the area the more specialised the work of the central college will become and, hence, the more advanced the type of work done in the branch colleges. In very large towns of 300,000 or more the former would probably confine itself to work such as that of the third senior year and upwards of the National Certificate and similar courses, while the latter would deal with vocational work up to and sometimes including that year.

55. The relation between the central college and the branch colleges must be emphasised. The former is not to be regarded as a senior partner in the group which draws off from the branch colleges all their best students. Students will only pass from one to the other when the branch colleges can no longer satisfy their legitimate needs. The majority will neither wish nor need to make the transfer, and for those who make it the gain will be solely within the sphere of activity that has made it necessary. Apart from its special function the central college will be organised on exactly the same lines as the branch colleges, will provide the same facilities for physical and general education, and the same social and recreational amenities, so that when a student is transferred to it he will normally pursue all his studies there, both vocational and general. The branch colleges will be very closely linked with the central college but they will in no sense be "under" it. It is desirable that any governing body appointed to watch over the affairs and interests of one should, at least, be closely associated with all.

56. What has just been said is to be regarded as a suggestion for solving some of the problems outlined in Chapter II. The differences between various parts of the country, quite apart from the densities of their populations, the amount of technical, commercial and art education already established in some areas, the geographical peculiarities of some and the special industrial conditions of others, make anything more precise than a general suggestion inopportune. Each area must deal empirically with its own problems within the general framework proposed. The framework itself, though capable of being


[page 18]

adapted and developed, should not be altered without the most searching consideration. It may be well to restate its cardinal principles:

(1) The scheme must meet the fundamental, as well as the purely vocational needs, of the young people for whom it is to be created.
(2) It must be flexible enough to allow for vocational and nonvocational work to be carried on within it, without artificial and harmful segregation.
(3) It must recognise the fact that the whole field of further education is one.
ADVISORY BODIES

57. It is evident that if the scheme is to satisfy these three conditions full use must be made of the advice and experience of those who are vitally interested in the welfare of their area and of those concerned with its industry and commerce. Advisory bodies, on which these various local interests are represented, would form the channel along which suggestions, enquiries and requests were passed from the colleges to the community and vice versa. Through their agency useful experiments could be set on foot and misunderstandings and difficulties removed, and their existence would be of benefit both to the community and to the colleges.

V PREMISES

58. It will be recalled that one of the causes of the failure of the day continuation schools was that they were established in unsuitable buildings, many of them disused or even black-listed elementary schools. It has sometimes been held, though not by those qualified to speak, that what matters is what goes on in a building and not the building itself. If these two were separate and without influence one upon the other, the contention might be admitted to have some force, but, in fact, what goes on in a building is largely conditioned by the kind of building in which it goes on and, if the building be unsuitable, not only the work but the building itself deteriorates. It is essential, if the scheme is to be a success, for the colleges to be properly housed. As a purely temporary expedient, while the buildings are in construction, it may be necessary to use makeshift premises, but by the time the scheme is launched the ultimate solution should be not only envisaged but in course of becoming a concrete fact. It is not suggested that all the buildings need be new. In many areas it may be not only economical but actually preferable to adapt and extend an existing building, particularly where it is one of character and on a central site. In some country towns there are spacious houses with large grounds which would be as suitable as entirely new


[page 19]

premises on the outskirts. Some of the buildings erected by the Government for war purposes, provided that they are conveniently situated might also prove useful.

59. The buildings, like every other part of the scheme, must be planned to suit the real needs of their occupants, that is to say, they must make it easy (and not merely possible) to do the kind of things suggested in Chapters VIII, IX and X and they must, therefore, be designed to cut out all waste of time and energy on the part of staff and students. This, perhaps, only needs stating to secure agreement, and in fact, if the general argument of the chapters on curriculum, among others, is accepted the rest follows almost automatically. The provision of buildings, however, will form a considerable item in the initial cost of the scheme and there may be some temptation to economise on them. It is, therefore, important that the reasons for what is proposed should be clearly stated and clearly understood.

SITES

60. Of the site all that need be said is that it should be the best obtainable in the circumstances. Save that it should not be immediately adjacent to some unpleasant or noisy feature, such as a gas-works, slag-heap, tannery or goods yard, its surroundings are not of major importance. There is as much interest to be found in a housing estate or an industrial area, as in a piece of moorland or a farm, and it will be the business of the college to discover the appropriate interest. The size should ideally be great enough to include playing fields, but this will not always be possible, though the playing fields should be as near as can be managed. Where they are not on the site there should if possible be room for minor team games and athletic practices such as shot-putting and jumping. Wherever the site and whatever its size it should be made as attractive as skill and taste can make it, and it should always include a space for a garden.

BUILDINGS

61. The building as a whole must be dignified and beautiful as well as suited to its purpose. It should be an addition, in every sense, to the amenities of its neighbourhood. It would be a poor compliment to call these buildings colleges if they looked only like institutions. The time is past when educational architecture was felt to require the Gothic style or the gloomy inconvenience of lancet windows, turret staircases and sunless cloisters. There is a contemporary school of architecture capable of meeting the demands that the colleges can make of it, and which, it is to be hoped, they will make.

62. Before considering the accommodation that will be required it may be well to mention, once again, that, although the colleges will be designed primarily for compulsory part-time education, they will normally serve other purposes as well. Voluntary evening classes will be conducted in them and they may house youth centres. It may be remarked in passing that they may thus free the primary and secondary schools from excessive use.


[page 20]

ADMINISTRATION AND STAFF ROOMS

63. The administration of a college will be much more complicated than that of a full-time school. Five different sets of students, not to speak of the voluntary users of the building, will require an efficient system of records and a considerable amount of secretarial work. A Principal's room will not be adequate for this nor must the Principal's time be spent on routine clerical work. He is there for other purposes from which he must be diverted as little as possible. A general office with a small waiting room communicating with it will be needed, and the provision of staff rooms needs no justification.

ASSEMBLY HALL AND GYMNASIUM

64. The two biggest items of accommodation are the assembly hall and the gymnasium. The former will serve a number of purposes. First it will be the place for all formal occasions, assembly, religious services, lectures, film shows and dramatic performances. Secondly it will be in constant use for dramatic and musical activities and for some others which are better practised in a large unencumbered space than in an ordinary classroom. Thirdly it will be indispensable for larger evening gatherings and for social activities connected with the college. All colleges should be provided with a canteen, but in the small ones it may be necessary for the hall to be used for a midday meal. If it is to fulfil these four functions efficiently it is clear that it must be of considerable size, that it must include a properly equipped stage and provision for projection, that it must communicate with the kitchen and that there must be suitable arrangements for storing chairs and for clearing the floor-space rapidly. It is also clear that it cannot in any circumstances be combined with the gymnasium.

65. The gymnasium will be in constant use. In many cases it will be necessary for one group or another to be making use of it throughout the working day. It could only be dispensed with where there is an existing gymnasium very near the college which is available for continuous use in the evening as well as during the day. It is hardly necessary to add that the gymnasium must be fully equipped and must include changing rooms and shower rooms.

LIBRARY

66. A generous and a catholic supply of books will be indispensable to the work of the college and these books must be properly housed. Not only must the books be readily accessible but the library must be one in which quiet and private reading is easily contrived. The room must be much more than a book-store. No one who has worked in a good library will underestimate the importance of atmosphere and of reasonable comfort as aids to study and research. The possibility of establishing a branch public library within the building might be considered, as this would give better staffing and service than might otherwise be possible and would emphasise the connection between the college and the community.


[page 21]

STUDENTS' COMMON ROOM

67. It will be remembered that the first need of the adolescent mentioned in Chapter II was "social experience, and participation in a community life". This need must be provided for in the college buildings. A students' common room should be a focal point where the students can learn much (unconsciously no doubt) about the art of living together and of organising their small society. The room should be "theirs" in a sense in which no other room in the building can be said to be and the privilege of using it should soon be seen to carry with it responsibilities and duties and the need for a self-imposed discipline. The existence of various clubs and societies in the college which will be such an important part of its life will make it desirable to have a small committee room. There should also be a medical inspection and first-aid room.

68. The accommodation so far described represents the core of the college. It will be needed as much in a small college as in a large one. The amount of teaching space, and to a lesser extent the kind, depends upon the size of the college. The more rooms there are the more it will be possible to design and equip them for special purposes. In small colleges the rooms must be capable of rapid conversion from one use to another. In all colleges craft rooms and classrooms will be needed.

CRAFT ROOMS

69. Craft rooms are of three kinds, domestic, light crafts, and heavy crafts. The domestic room should give the students opportunities for practising simple home crafts, and should contain the kind of apparatus required by an ordinary housewife. The room should reproduce the best conditions in a good average home, though it must, of course, be planned for the work of a group of students rather than an individual. A room of this kind will not serve its purpose if its equipment is too far beyond the needs and means of the ordinary householder, but, on the other hand the equipment must set a good standard in design, spacing and arrangement, and must never be allowed to become out of date. The main aim of the work in this room is to act as an incentive to a general raising of standards of performance and of living, and this should be a guide to its design and equipment.

70. The light crafts room will be used for all kinds of manual work, exclusive of housecraft, woodwork and metalwork. It may require a certain amount of special apparatus, painting, drawing, and modelling materials, equipment for bookcrafts, spinning, dyeing and weaving and perhaps a potter's wheel, but its main requirement is that it should be large and plentifully provided with storage and benches, so that it can be rapidly adapted to the uses, varying perhaps from day to day and certainly from year to year, that will be made of it. The heavy crafts rooms, which will be used for woodwork and metalwork, will not differ markedly from similar rooms in existing


[page 22]

schools, except that they will require more than the usual amount of storage space.

71. These craft rooms will accommodate all the indoor work coming under the heading of practical activities and some of the general and elective activities as well. In addition adequate provision will be necessary for giving instruction in the other specialised activities mentioned in Chapter VIII.

CLASSROOMS

72. Classrooms are mainly used for writing, listening and discussion. They must be properly equipped for all these and all of them should be wired for radio reception and visual aids. What is done in the classrooms, what there is to watch and look at in them are outside the scope of this chapter, but they must be rooms which it is possible to make interesting and which do not too closely resemble the classrooms which the students have known at school. Perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to a classroom is to say that it does not look like one. Pleasant interior decoration and attractive furnishing will naturally be of great importance in creating the right kind of environment.

CLOAKROOMS AND LAVATORIES

73. A word may be added about the cloakrooms and lavatories. Hardly a generation ago the standards generally accepted for these necessities were extremely low. Recent experience has shown that a high standard of provision is one of the quickest ways of securing a high standard of use, and, it is to be hoped that the highest possible standard will be adopted in the plans and exacted when the colleges are open.

VI STAFFING

74. The number of teachers required by the scheme proposed is between 18,000 and 20,000. After these have been trained it will be necessary to find and train only 1,000 a year or considerably fewer during the early years of the scheme when the annual wastage is likely to be below normal. There are thus short-term and long-term aspects of the problem, both of which need special consideration.

QUALIFICATIONS

75. First, something must be said of the qualifications that must be looked for in would-be teachers in the colleges. Above all they must be the kind whom the young people will like and respect, a qualification easier to prescribe than to identify! Although it depends,


[page 23]

fundamentally, upon personal qualities which no training can create, it may be developed by training and experience. A first-hand knowledge of the living and working conditions of the young people, experience in clubs and settlements and a well-directed course of psychological study can all be incorporated in a training course and should, in fact, form an important part of it. No attempt should be made to define the type of man or woman who is likely to appeal to the students, for experience has shown that a great variety of types can be successful with adolescents. During the training course the capacities of the trainees should be revealed and those who are obviously unsuitable must be withdrawn.

76. A second indispensable qualification is an enquiring mind. This, again, will reveal itself during training, and is not guaranteed by the possession of any kind of certificate. Those who have such a mind are often possessed of high academic qualifications but it may be found among others as well and should be quickly recognisable during a training course, though it is nor altogether easy to define. Its possessors usually have a thorough knowledge of one or more branches of study but they do not confine their interests to such studies. They differ in this from the scholar and the researcher who may, for excellent reasons, concentrate on a narrow field of observation. Part-time students may come to respect profound knowledge and great skill, but their first need will be for a teacher who can stimulate and share their interests, who can destroy barriers and open up new lines of vision.

77. The third general qualification will be an ability to teach. Although outstanding teaching ability is perhaps rather innate than acquired, training can do much to develop and improve whatever is latent in the individual, and practice is often accompanied by remarkably rapid progress. The training courses should include opportunities for practice and should soon reveal the small minority who have no aptitude.

78. The qualifications just mentioned are not of a kind that could be tested by examination and could not, therefore, be made conditions of admission to a course of training though the lack of them would be an excellent reason for elimination during the course. Admission should be granted to the widest possible field but the limits of that field may be usefully, if not precisely, indicated by saying that candidates for admission should normally be not less than 24 years of age and should possess a degree or alternative qualification generally recognised as being of comparable standard: or have successfully completed an approved course of training for teaching: or have reached a standard of thorough competence in industry, trade or profession.

SOURCE OF RECRUITMENT

79. The desirable characteristics and qualifications are not confined to any group or class, though they may be commoner in some than


[page 24]

in others. Broadly speaking the teachers will be recruited from industry, commerce and the professions, including teaching; from youth service and welfare work and, in the years immediately following the war, from the services. Recruits from industry and commerce, and from the youth service and welfare, though they will have had much useful experience, will have little or no knowledge of the technique of teaching, while those from the teaching profession may know nothing of industrial conditions. From the services will come a great variety of experience and talent, much of which will be particularly useful in compulsory part-time education but which will not, by itself, be enough. Recruits from all these sources will need training.

COURSES OF TRAINING

80. The kind of training course to be given is implicit in a good deal of what is said elsewhere in this pamphlet. It may differ considerably from training courses that have been given in the past and it will require imagination as well as experience in those who plan it. No more need be said here, but the length of the courses and the best places in which to hold them need consideration.

81. It is suggested that candidates from the teaching profession could be satisfactorily trained in six months. Assuming that they have had not less than two years of full-time teaching their main need would be to gain a knowledge of the conditions under which their future students work and live. During the first years of the scheme they will not, of course, be able to do teaching practice in the colleges which will not yet have opened, but they could make use of the existing facilities for part-time day and evening education. There will be some recruits who have had combined industrial and part-time teaching experience and for these the emphasis may be more upon the technique and practice of teaching.

82. For candidates with no previous experience of teaching, who come from industry, youth work or welfare work, a six months course will not be enough. For these a one-year course is recommended with an emphasis on teaching and on a thorough study of adolescent psychology.

PART-TIME COURSES

83. Although full-time courses are preferable and should be the normal type of training, the difficulty of releasing members of the teaching profession for full-time training in the circumstances that are likely to attend the outset of the scheme may make it necessary to hold part-time courses for those who are qualified to take the six months courses mentioned above. Such courses would stretch over a year and would have to include evening lectures and classes on the aims, problems and techniques of part-time education together with part-time teaching in technical colleges, art schools, evening institutes and youth clubs.


[page 25]

CANDIDATES FROM THE FORCES

84. Candidates from the services would take whichever of the above courses were most appropriate. It is essential that all candidates, from whatever source, who seem unlikely to become satisfactory teachers under the scheme should be advised at the earliest possible stage in their training to withdraw. Anyone who has successfully completed whatever course of training is prescribed should be recognised as a qualified teacher.

85. As there will be an appreciable interval of time between demobilisation and the opening of the colleges, there may be many ex-service men and women who, attracted by work in the colleges, will find themselves unable to take it up immediately. Such people, after a period of training, would have to find posts probably in secondary schools until the special training courses had been initiated preparatory to the opening of the colleges. They will gain much and lose nothing by this experience and they should be able to make a valuable contribution during their stay in the secondary schools where the outlook has a good deal in common with that anticipated in the colleges.

86. When the colleges have been opened the recruiting and training of teachers will fall to the normal annual figure of 1,000 or less. Where the training courses will be given when that point is reached need not be settled here. It would be unwise to separate them completely from courses in other types of teaching but it would be equally so to allow trainees for the colleges to become insignificant pockets in larger training institutions. Whatever scheme is ultimately framed must neither isolate the trainees, nor reduce them to the status of exceptions, and it must provide for refresher courses at fairly frequent intervals.

87. The precise pattern which the national system of training for the teaching profession will take in the future is not yet certain. The McNair Committee has recently recommended "that the training of teachers for county colleges should be undertaken, like the training of all other teachers, by the area training services" described in the report. Whatever training arrangements are ultimately made the staffing of the colleges will be greatly helped by mobility of staff throughout the whole educational system.

THE IMMEDIATE PROBLEM

88. The immediate problem, that of training 18,000 to 20,000 teachers, is an entirely different one. There will be no ready-made staff to tackle it. The existing training colleges and university training departments could not be expected to undertake a scheme involving, among many other new factors, the establishment of strong links with industry at a time when they would be fully occupied with their normal types of training. A special temporary training scheme is essential.


[page 26]

89. Men and women may be attracted to this new kind of teaching if it offers them a career of reasonable security and reasonable chances of promotion. The best of them, those whose energy, goodwill and imagination are most needed, will ask for something else besides, though not instead of, these advantages. They will have to be convinced that the career offers them a chance of service, and of playing their part in national reconstruction. If the scheme proposed for training and for the colleges themselves fails to create this conviction it will fail not only to attract the best, but even perhaps to attract sufficient numbers for the bare staffing of the colleges. If that were to happen the whole idea of part-time education would end in calamity. If it can attract and hold the interest of the best it may profoundly affect the future of the country.

VII INTERNAL PROBLEMS

90. It has been stated in Chapter I that some sections of this pamphlet must be, of necessity, somewhat indefinite and inconclusive. There is no large body of experience available, no well-established tradition to be preserved or modified, no large number of people in existence who have given much time and thought to problems of part-time compulsory education. The principals and staffs of the colleges, on the morning of their opening, will face a problem that is new in many of its aspects and no one can tell them in advance just how it is to be solved. The experiments must be made before judgment can be passed upon them. The following chapters must be read in the light of that fact.

91. The development of adolescence has already been briefly discussed and it is only necessary to add here to what has already been said that all teachers should be not only familiar with adolescents but well-informed about adolescence; that they should have, in other words, practical and theoretical knowledge of the human material for which they will take responsibility. It will now be useful to consider in greater detail, some of the immediate problems with which the principals and staffs will be faced, and to suggest some possible solutions.

THE NEED FOR GAINING THE INTEREST AND LOYALTY OF THE STUDENTS

92. The young worker attending the college compulsorily will, as we have seen, look upon it with a very different eye from that with which the whole-time pupil regards his school. Only a small portion of his time will be spent there. At best it will be only one of the things that command his interest and loyalty. If that interest and


[page 27]

loyalty are not captured, compulsory part-time education will be a failure and no arguments that the young people ought to appreciate it, or ought to like what is done for them or what they do, will be of any avail to disprove that failure. The inference is that the college must be not only good for its students but must appear to be so to them and that is not necessarily the same thing. They must understand, clearly and quickly, why they are there and the benefits that attendance can give to them. Their understanding may be far from complete but some measure of it must be established from the outset. The first problem is "How can this be done?"

93. It may be said at once that attractive and well-equipped buildings and a staff that can immediately command friendliness, admiration and respect from the students will do much to dispose them in favour of attendance, but the initial interest thus aroused will soon evaporate if their days are not planned in a manner that is comprehensible and profitable to them. Students who are taking vocational courses will have little difficulty in accepting the usefulness of what they do during those courses. A boy who wants to be an engineer will see, without explanation, the point of doing practical work and constructional drawing. Physical training appears to be attractive in itself to the vast majority of adolescents and the reason for doing it can be understood by all. Most girls enjoy the various domestic subjects that they are taught and all can appreciate the value of learning them. The practical and physical activities are a useful and reliable core that may be depended upon to appeal directly and immediately to most of the students.

NON-VOCATIONAL ACTIVITIES

94. It is when the curriculum outside these groups comes to be planned and followed that the difficulties arise. It may be difficult to convince the boy with a strong if limited vocational outlook that he is not wasting his time if, for a third of his day, he is required to study literature or music, and to persuade young people of limited intelligence and experience that such subjects as history, geography and English have any value for them. It is true that, if they are satisfied with a portion of the curriculum, they may be more ready to take the rest on trust, but a much more positive attitude is not only desirable but, it is believed, possible. The attitude that poetry, say, is to be tolerated as a kind of penance for having enjoyed physical training and woodwork is not good either for poetry or for the young people who hold it. The aim must be to arouse the same positive interest and to secure the same willing concentration in all parts of the day and to let the students go home with the feeling of a day well spent, one in which each part has contributed to the whole.

TI-IE NEED FOR FLEXIBILITY IN PLANNING THE CURRICULUM

95. Neither anarchy or dictatorship is likely to bring about this happy state of affairs. The most promising solution is to plan the curriculum


[page 28]

so that periods of comparative rigidity in which the students follow a prescribed course, alternate with, or are relieved by, periods in which there is the largest possible opportunity for them to choose what they do and how they do it. They will not, most of them, have sufficient experience or stability to plan a whole day for themselves with profit, but they will certainly learn little from a day in which everything that they do is laid down for them by a higher authority.

96. A balanced time-table will not produce unaided the result desired, which will depend equally upon the whole spirit in which the college is run. A college in which there is a lively concern for civilised values, in which the students are given real responsibilities, in which they are given jobs to do and are held responsible for carrying them out, in which they are often consulted and always listened to with consideration, a college, in short, which is theirs, is far more likely to succeed than one which, however efficient, is purely authoritarian.

97. Flexibility of organisation and outlook, a readiness to consider new ideas and suggestions purely on their merits and to scrap ruthlessly schemes that have proved unsuccessful, and at the same time to persevere with those which, though unsuccessful at the outset, seem to be sound, a readiness, that is, both to admit and to discount failure, will assist the staff to create a college that is alive, satisfying to all who belong to it and capable of solid achievement.

THE BACKWARD STUDENT

98. A problem that is likely to present itself forcibly to the staff at an early stage in the life of the scheme is that created by the presence of some young people whose mastery of the basic skills is seriously incomplete. A student who is unable to read simple English, to perform easy calculations and to write a letter will be at a considerable disadvantage in college, as well as out of it, and may present great difficulties to those who have to teach him. Although the numbers of such students will be very small, their presence in any number at all may be a source of continual trouble. Even one such student in a class, or a comparatively small number in a college, may create a really considerable problem.

99. It may be well to consider how far the presence of such students is inevitable. The children who are so backward as to have required to be educated in special schools will continue their full time education until they are 16 when they will pass to the county colleges for two years unless they are certified as ineducable. Their mastery of the fundamental skills is, at the very best, likely to be extremely limited, and they will not be able to take part in any activity which depends upon good reading ability or powers of calculation. Apart from this small group there will be some others who are retarded, either because of subnormal intelligence or because they have failed, for a variety of causes, to profit by their schooling. None of them, it should be said, is absolutely incapable of learning to read or write,


[page 29]

nor should the fact that they have failed to do so be ascribed to any one cause. The important point is that they exist and that they will be found in the colleges.

100. A student who, for whatever reason, has failed in the years of full-time schooling to learn to read and write is unlikely to remedy his deficiencies solely by attendance at a college on one day a week. He will require special consideration and, though the colleges may be the agencies by which remedial work is arranged, it will be neither possible nor desirable to do much of it during the period of compulsory attendance. The colleges' main duty towards such students will be to provide a curriculum which they can follow without a sense of failure and without too much disturbance to the interests of the more able students. Some hints as to what kind of a curriculum that may be will be found in the following chapter.

THE EXCEPTIONALLY ABLE STUDENT

101. The opposite problem to that just considered, that of how to provide for the non-vocational student of unusually high ability, is much less formidable. Such students will be exceptional. There are not many outstandingly intelligent young people who are not either in full-time educational institutions or attracted by vocational studies, and the organisation proposed should make it possible for some of the special cases to be dealt with by transfer. The remainder will find their place provided that the curricula are flexible and adaptable and here again the suggestions in the next chapter may prove of some use.

VARIETY IN THE TIME-TABLE

102. The desirability of a flexible curriculum, of periods when the students choose and even plan their own activities, has been often urged in other fields of education and there are many examples to show that such methods can produce remarkably good results. They do, however, make heavy demands upon the skill of teachers. It is in some ways easier to follow a rigid time-table and a prescribed scheme of work even though the consequence may be apathy in teachers as well as pupils. In the college the teacher may seem, at first sight to be faced with two almost equally horrifying alternatives. He may either repeat everything five times in every week or he may follow a different scheme with each of his five groups. If he does the former he must reckon with increasing staleness as the week goes on; if the latter he must exhibit an inventiveness and ingenuity with which few human beings are endowed. No such acute dilemma is in fact likely to present itself. In physical training it is not difficult to find possible variations within a definite syllabus and repetition is in any event less wearisome in this than in some other subjects. In music, art and crafts, the very nature of the subjects makes variety inevitable. To explain five times in one week the volume of a cone, to have five sets of composition to correct in five days or to produce the same play with five different groups, are however extremely unattractive prospects. They need not arise if the staff approach their


[page 30]

work rightly. In the first place there is no necessity for a weekly time-table, for a pattern that is, which repeats itself every seven days. A fortnightly or monthly or even termly time-table in which some of the activities would be followed intensively for a time and then dropped, is a possibility that could be explored much more thoroughly than it has been in the past. Again, a single large field of study, an urban or rural survey, or an inquiry into the history and geography of a local industry, for example, could be taken with five different groups in five different ways, though the material used by all five would be the same and their work might be ultimately pooled.

103. How far such planning will assist the teachers to secure sufficient variety in their days to save themselves from wearisome repetition and at the same time to keep this variety within manageable limits, will depend upon their attitude to the work as a whole. If they regard themselves as primarily teachers of subjects with a duty to transfer to their students a definite body of knowledge the part-time system will force them into mechanical instruction and, in a short time, apathy. Even in vocational courses such an attitude has its dangers. In the non-vocational it will be fatal. If, on the other hand, they see themselves as adults concerned to assist their students to grow up successfully, they will certainly still have a problem to solve, and one that is far from simple, but it will not be an insoluble one. Five different groups of young people will then be five different sets of possibilities, five different sources of interest and inspiration and not merely five reception sets for one repeated transmission.

THE AIMS OF EDUCATION IN COUNTY COLLEGES

104. It may be well at this point to suggest a list of the aims of education in the colleges. The aims suggested here are as definite as such things can reasonably be and each of them can be realised in a concrete form. It will be noticed that no specifically religious aim appears on the list though obviously several of the aims are religious in the wider senses of the word. A daily assembly with some corporate act of worship for all who wish to attend will doubtless be a feature common to all colleges, and during the elective periods to be mentioned later there will be an opportunity for the study and discussion of religious questions.

105. The aims of the colleges may be formulated as follows:

I. (a) To help young people to understand how to live a healthy life;
(b) To give opportunities for regular physical exercise and to develop physical skills.

II. To develop their knowledge and understanding so that, when they reach 18, boys and girls shall have
(a) learned to concentrate on a piece of work and to carry it out systematically and thoroughly;
(b) learned to use their leisure to find out more about


[page 31]

subjects that already interest them and acquire a desire to explore new fields;
(c) received a stimulus to the imagination through the enjoyment of music, drama, art and literature and the excitement of scientific discovery;
(d) improved their knowledge of the English language and their power to use it (in Wales, both English and Welsh);
(e) acquired an appreciation of the place and responsibilities of the family in a healthy community;
(f) obtained a good knowledge of conditions in their own country, and how they can help to improve them;
(g) learned more about the people of other countries;
(h) learned something of the leadership and co-operative service necessary for good citizenship in a democratic community.

III. To develop their characters so that they will
(a) be honourable, tolerant and kindly in dealing with their fellows;
(b) have an independent and balanced outlook on life.

VOLUNTARY LEISURE-TIME ACTIVITIES

106. One internal problem closely bound up with the aims just formulated remains for discussion. The principal may easily find himself the head not of one but of five institutions. During the compulsory periods there will be no contact between the five groups who collectively form the student body. It is of course open to the principal to resign himself to this state of affairs but there are grave objections to his doing so. Not only will the staff and the buildings be shared by all the groups but some transfers from group to group will be inevitable. The solution would seem to be found in the development of voluntary evening and week-end activities in which all the groups can join and mingle - drama clubs, chess clubs, discussion clubs, debates, dances, table-tennis tournaments, expeditions to places of historical, botanical, geographical or zoological interest, hiking, climbing and cycling clubs and so on. Many such organisations exist already as voluntary enterprises and a great increase in their membership may be anticipated as a consequence of the part-time system which w.ill greatly stimulate interest in the profitable employment of leisure. Even allowing for this, there will be many who will prefer to link their leisure-time activities with the college to which they belong and this will greatly assist the creation of a corporate spirit in the colleges.

107. No attempt has been made, in this brief survey of internal problems to underestimate the difficulties. Some are evident, others will become so when the scheme is under way. At the same time the possibilities are tremendous if they are viewed with a bold eye, and it is not to be doubted that there are many men and women in this country who will be eager to explore them.


[page 32]

VIII CURRICULUM

108. It has already been said that no detailed suggestions for the curriculum would be in place at the present moment. Experiment and experience will be needed before such suggestions can be of much use. At the same time it is possible and necessary to lay down the general lines on which the curriculum should be planned, though with a full acknowledgement that even these general lines may need reconsideration in the future. The problems facing the staff have been outlined in the previous chapter in which it was suggested that the curriculum should be a balanced system of free choice and dictated choice, of self-directed and teacher-directed work. The essential of any curriculum is that the right balance be secured and the right kind of day spent by the student. Whatever is planned must be planned as a whole - not as a series of unrelated activities.

VOCATIONAL AND NON-VOCATIONAL ACTIVITIES - A SUPERFICIAL DISTINCTION

109. The division of the curriculum that immediately suggests itself is into vocational and non-vocational courses, into work directly connected with present or future employment and work not so connected and often misleadingly described as cultural. Such a division, though corresponding to some extent to reality, is yet much too superficial to be of any great use. A student may study Spanish because he intends to go into South American business or because he wishes to read Spanish authorities on his particular subject or because he is interested in Spanish literature or art or history. A girl may take a course in cookery because she likes cooking, or because she is going to be married, or because she desires a position as a pastrycook. A boy may take a metal-work course because he is going to be an engineer or because he wishes to make a scale-model engine, or because he likes using his hands. The fact that a subject is taken by a student because of its connection with his career does not make it uneducational or non-cultural and may be a strong attraction to the student himself. Conversely subjects normally thought of as cultural such as art, drama, music and literature may have close connections with future careers. The division is not merely superficial but positively harmful. One school of thought is apt to regard vocational work with deep suspicion as being something undertaken solely in the interests of industry and commerce and as having little to do with education properly conceived, while another regards vocational work as the real purpose of part-time education and anything else as being of minor and merely ornamental importance. Both these views, it is suggested, are mistaken. To hold that the acquisition of skill or knowledge in some specialised industry is uneducational is to limit the meaning of education unnecessarily and harmfully, and to perpetuate an attitude of mind that has already done ill service to the


[page 33]

interests of young people. Equally, to regard anything but vocational training as being waste of time is to encourage one-sidedness, narrowness and ignorance. This particular subdivision will therefore receive no further mention except to say that courses of a vocational character, in the normally accepted sense, should not occupy more than five out of eight periods of a student's time and that in the first year at least most of the work should be general and not specialised.

110. The subdivision here adopted is into physical, practical, general and elective activities, each of which requires separate consideration.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

111. Physical education should be compulsory for all students save those whose disabilities make it undesirable for them to receive it. The term "physical education" is used in preference to "physical training" because it covers something much wider than is normally suggested by the latter term. Its objects are as much educational and sociological as physical and they may be briefly described as follows: to aid the complete development, both structural and functional, of the body; to cultivate the self-control, self-confidence and self-respect that a sense of physical efficiency gives; to develop the socially valuable qualities required by participation in team-games and various kinds of competitive activity; to provide a natural outlet for high spirits and to implant a taste for activities which in later life can be enjoyable recreations as well as the means of keeping healthy.

112. The scope of the work undertaken to attain these objects must be as wide as possible. It must provide for those with little natural taste for games and with a poor "eye for a ball" as well as for those with quick eyes and clever feet and hands; for the type who like climbing, hiking, sailing and camping, as well as for the footballers and cricketers; for the cautious as well as the adventurous, for the persevering as well as the skilful. It will include gymnastics, team-games and athletics, but it will not neglect dancing, swimming, boxing, wrestling and fencing. The war has shown that the young men and women of this country respond readily to situations demanding courage, endurance and initiative. Education must offer to students tasks and ventures that will call forth these qualities by putting the individual up against the problems and obstacles presented by nature in, for example, rock-climbing, mountain-walking, cross-country expeditions, handling boats and camping.

113. These latter activities cannot, of course, be undertaken in a fully developed form during the periods of compulsory attendance, but they can and should be organised from the colleges and the necessary preliminary training and knowledge given there. The planning of a cross-country expedition may include not only physical exercises but co-operative work, map-reading and the use of a compass and may, further, be the means of demonstrating in the most convincing fashion the practical importance of proper food and sleep which are essential to the success of any physical education scheme.


[page 34]

114. Evidently what has been outlined will demand good accommodation, equipment and teaching, besides a reasonable allowance of time. The first three do not differ in kind from what is needed in other kinds of educational institution, but the apportionment of time in a single day in the week is a special matter. It is suggested that in an eight-period day one and a half periods be devoted to physical education and that everything possible be done to extend this time-allowance by voluntary physical activities at the week-ends and perhaps in the evenings.

PRACTICAL ACTIVITIES

115. The second subdivision of the curriculum suggested is practical. Here again the term is comprehensive and includes much more than is normally covered by the words manual instruction. It may be defined as meaning the acquisition of a skill including the knowledge that forms the background of the skill, and as including vocational and non-vocational work. The number and kind of alternatives offered in any one college must depend upon the size of the college, the characteristics of the locality, the organisation of further education in the locality and on the versatility of the staff. It has been suggested in an earlier chapter that certain vocational courses for industries or trades which may employ comparatively few young people or which use special equipment which it would be uneconomical and inefficient to install in a number of branch colleges, should, as a rule, be followed at a central college for further education. Such industries as textiles, rubber, printing, and bakery are examples of these. Other courses, however, for building, engineering and clerical occupations, among others, should generally be taken, at least in the more elementary stages, in the branch colleges.

116. Home management and crafts including food, dress and furnishing, gardening and the care of livestock, workshop crafts including wood and metalwork, drawing, painting and the lighter crafts, most of which have a long and world-wide tradition, music, drama and the film may be mentioned as the kinds of activity that appear to be specially suitable. It will be noticed that there is nothing essentially vocational or non-vocational about any of them. They are selected first because one or more of them is likely to appeal strongly to almost all the young people concerned, and secondly because each offers an opportunity for learning good workmanship and the proper use of tools and materials. It is worth remembering that in the modern world most work is done behind factory walls so that children have fewer opportunities than they had of old of watching adults at work. To watch a craftsman, joiner, farrier, or wheelwright at his job, to be in daily contact with the ancient occupations of spinning, weaving, baking and brewing, was one of the best ways of learning the meaning of hard and careful work and of high standards. To be deprived of such an opportunity may lead to an impression that standards do not matter and that work is something without its own satisfaction and no more than a means of earning money. Mass-production methods


[page 35]

which break down what is, in total, a skilled job into a number of repetitive semi-skilled processes, encourage this view and, indeed, give it real force. It is, therefore, of paramount importance to provide the young worker with an opportunity for learning a skill, and all that skill means, and for obtaining the satisfaction and self-confidence which comes from possessing and practising a skill. From this it clearly follows that the supply of materials available must be more carefully chosen and more generous than has sometimes been the case in schools in the past, and must not depend in any way upon the ability of the students to buy the things that they make.

117. The first aim of this practical work should be that each student shall gain some mastery of at least one craft or activity by the end of his or her course, but there is a second aim which must not be lost sight of even though it may be simplest to achieve it during the general period rather than during the practical work itself. This is that the young worker should acquire not merely skill but also knowledge and understanding of his subject. The results of skill without knowledge and understanding are all too evident in poor design, tasteless layout, meaningless decoration, reckless mixture of styles, ill-mannered buildings and defacement of natural beauties. Often, indeed, such defects are accompanied by work that is deficient also in skill but this is by no means always so. There are many examples of sound construction accompanied by a total lack of taste, the work of those whose skill was unsupported by knowledge and understanding. Practical work in the colleges must be sufficiently widely conceived to correct this fault. To know the mathematics and engineering of building is not enough. It is necessary to know something of architecture. It is dangerous to know the structure of textiles and to be impervious to the demands of good design. A man without taste may grow flowers and vegetables with complete success, but his garden may be an eyesore. Furthermore, knowledge and understanding will not merely produce better work in every sense but will greatly add to the interest of doing the work and thus to the happiness of the worker.

118. Whether it is done during the practical, or the general, or the elective periods, or in all three, the larger implication, the cultural aspects, of whatever skill is being acquired must be given their place. It is suggested that in general three of eight periods should be devoted to practical work.

GENERAL ACTIVITIES

119. The third subdivision of the curriculum has been given the intentionally somewhat vague name of "General Activities". Precisely what is done during this period must depend upon the particular gifts and capabilities of the staff, upon the interests of the students and upon local circumstances and needs. Uniformity is neither desirable nor possible. As a general indication of the content of this period the terms English, citizenship, history, geography, science and mathematics may be used but that way of classifying the material


[page 36]

is not likely to have much significance for the majority of part-time students. To derive full benefit from studying any of these as subjects a student must devote much more time than can be available on one day a week for three years and, it may be thought, must possess a type of mind and intelligence which is more likely to be found in whole-time institutions. While, therefore, it would be unwise to rule out the possibility of straight courses in any of these subjects, it is probable that a different kind of approach to the fields that they include will be desirable. In everyday life, both in work and in leisure, events and experiences are rarely related to a single subject. During a Saturday afternoon walk knowledge may be required and used which is drawn from history, geography, science, mathematics and English, though the hiker may never think about such terms. He is interested in his walk and not in ways of classifying it.

120. In the following chapter some suggestions for classifying the traditional material in different ways are offered. Something must now be said about the general principles which should govern this section of the curriculum. The traditional "school" approach is to be avoided. The knowledge and experience gained at school will of course be used by the students, but they must feel that they are doing more than simply continuing their previous studies at the point where they left them off. The syllabuses, whatever form they take, must be closely related to the needs and interests and experience of the students and to each other. The background of the students' lives, current events, recent discoveries and inventions, new applications of science to home and factory, developments in plant and animal breeding, local industries and undertakings, farms, dairies and markets, museums, art galleries, theatres and places of historical interest, among other things, should provide the initial material for study. Concrete things that can be seen and directly experienced provide better starting points for the study of ideas than the ideas themselves. A course of history might well be a failure but a study of local development in the past hundred years might not only be a success in itself but lead to further historical enquiry. Much of the work may be done in the classroom or laboratory but nothing could be worse than the formal classroom approach. Visits outside the college should be arranged and there should be frequent use of the library, the wireless and the film and other visual aids to learning. Anything which contributes to the aim of the work should be used. Nothing should be rejected (or included) on the ground that it has never been used before for the advancement of education.

121. It is recommended that two periods out of eight be devoted to general activities but it must be pointed out that close connection between such activities and those considered under the headings of practical and elective is not only desirable but almost inevitable if the aims set forth are to be realised. The figure of two periods is therefore liable to be an underestimate of the time that most students will actually devote to the kind of education often described as cultural.


[page 37]

ELECTIVE ACTIVITIES

122. The remaining section of the curriculum which it is recommended shall occupy one and a half periods out of eight is described as elective activities. The importance of allowing the students opportunities for choosing and planning some at least of their work has already been mentioned. This will be possible, to a varying degree, in each of the three subdivisions that have been considered. It is desirable, however, to set aside a part of the day in which the opportunities for free choice are greater than during the other periods. This will enable students to follow up or to take up activities and studies which specially appeal to them. The way in which this freedom of choice will be exercised will depend obviously upon the kind of young people in attendance, upon the popularity of the instruction given in the sections already mentioned and upon the qualifications and experience of the staff. There may be demands for additional physical training or for more practical work or for straight courses in English literature or mathematics, or science. The period will be especially useful for laying the foundations of social activities and of societies and clubs. Such societies depend for their success upon the right amount of expert guidance being given by the staff and upon the way in which the students are trained to accept responsibility. Religious, literary, debating, scientific, dramatic and musical societies, art and archaeological clubs, gardeners' associations and so on would help to develop latent talent and stimulate further interest. Not all would spring up in any one college or perhaps in every one of the five groups in one college, and all would have the fluctuating vitality that distinguishes such organisations however carefully the staff may nurture them. Through them the students will learn more than the knowledge imparted at their sessions. They will learn how to run a meeting, how to disagree with an opponent, how to listen and how to speak. Properly organised and used such societies will be of major importance in the life of the students.

THE PLACE OF RELIGION

123. Something should be said here about the place of religion. It has already been suggested that the day should begin with a brief corporate act of worship of an undenominational kind which all who felt able to do so would be asked to attend, but there are many who feel that something more than this should be done. There are, however, serious difficulties in setting aside a definite portion of the day for religious study. It seems best to allow it to meet a demand rather than to prescribe it for all. During the elective period a group, perhaps a very large group of students, may express a wish to study the Bible, or the history of religion or of a particular Church, or to discuss ethical problems from the religious point of view. There is often a vigorous development of the religious sense during adolescence and there is every reason for meeting and guiding this spirit of enquiry.


[page 38]

THE BALANCE OF THE TIME-TABLE

124. This chapter may be concluded with a word about the time-table. It has been suggested that the day be divided into eight periods of which one and a half are to be given to physical education, three to practical, two to general and one and a half to elective activities. Such a day seems to give the necessary balance of movement and stillness, of physical and mental activity, of free choice and imposed choice, and of active and passive participation. At the same time the proportions, though they should hold good over a longer period may be varied as occasion demands on any given day. Time-tables have a way of degenerating from conveniences into strait-jackets and, worse still, into excuses. In the county colleges it will be specially important to avoid this danger.

IX SOME SUGGESTIONS

125. The previous chapter was concerned with the general organisation of the work and there are good arguments for going no further at this stage and for leaving all the details to be worked out in practice. It may, however, be useful to indicate briefly some possible approaches to those fields which can be designated as English, environmental studies, science, art and music. It has already been emphasised that these fields have no precise boundaries and that what is done in one may be, and usually should be, closely connected with what is done in another. Nevertheless they may be considered separately without denial of that important principle.

THE STUDY OF ENGLISH

126. English has suffered in the past from being a subject for public examination and from being regarded as a separate compartment of the curriculum. The first has resulted in a premium being set on memory and on a capacity for reproducing accepted or acceptable opinions rather than on sensitiveness and discrimination which, though much more important, are almost impossible to test objectively. The second has led to a narrow over-literary treatment which has excluded scientific and historical literature and has set up essay writing as a desirable achievement for many who have no aptitude for it. The former danger may be avoided in the colleges by absence of an external examination which all their pupils must take. The latter is more insidious and cannot be evaded by any purely administrative device. A knowledge and understanding of the background, limitations, prospects and desires of the students, in addition to a well developed linguistic sense will be needed in the teacher of English. A love of literature will not, by itself, be a sufficient qualification.


[page 39]

127. In spoken English formal training on one day a week can have little place. Such training is only effective when given frequently and in short periods. An increasing command of words can only derive from an increasing range of interest and experience and from application to the problems created by that interest and experience. The principal aids to fluency and clarity of speech are informal discussion, formal debate, dramatic activity and listening. In written English, too, there can be little place for formal instruction as such. That will have been given for ten compulsory years and if it has been unsuccessful during whole-time schooling will not be any less so if given on one compulsory day a week. The various studies and activities carried on should give many opportunities to all the students for practising the simpler kinds of writing (recording, note-keeping, diaries, reports, letters) while those with a taste for creative writing should be stimulated by the making of anthologies, magazines and wall-newspapers.

128. The study of the mother tongue may be organised in a variety of ways. It should be possible to discover and develop an interest in the language that the students use every day through local dialect, comparison of English with American, the study of headlines and advertisements, of ways of influencing thought by language, of the possible uses of Basic and of the two main functions of language (to convey information and to arouse emotion) and the confusion between them. Once the interest is developed, some of the students may be led to a critical appreciation of prose and poetry, contemporary as well as classical.

129. Courses in literature should be initiated with caution, and in response only to a definite demand which may be deliberately stimulated. The first essential is to provide a library of books suited to a very wide variety of tastes and interests. Everything done in the colleges, from sport to biology, is likely to be advanced by the use of books, whereas only a minority of the students, at least to begin with, will wish to study what is usually meant by literature. As their own knowledge and experience grows they will want to share the knowledge and experience of others, but the staff should not be in too great a hurry to commend that knowledge and experience to them before the need of it becomes conscious. When the need is there it must be met and met generously.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ACTING

130. Of all forms of literature, drama is the most suitable for classroom purposes, not only because of the inherent suitability of the medium itself but because of the large number of derivative studies and activities that can arise from the basic activity of acting. It need not take the form of a casual or occasional performance but can supply material for study and protracted work. Acting can include all kinds of informal drama, such as games, exercises, mime, impromptu, variety, as well as one-act plays and full-length plays.


[page 40]

It can lead to play-making from dramatisation of poems to the writing of plays by individuals, and to the study of dramatic literature, incidental music, ballet and opera. It can arouse an interest not only in production and stage-managing but in the study of stage-lighting, decor, costume and make-up, with resultant model theatres, property shops and stage sets. Finally it may bring about a tradition of intelligent theatre-going and amateur production. There is much to be said for making more use of the long-established forms of folk culture as instruments of popular education. The academic tradition has tended to neglect them, but their worth has been proved many times over and drama is one of the richest and most alive of those still surviving to-day.

COMBINED STUDIES

131. History, geography, economics and science are each ways of looking at and interpreting human environment and man's relationship to it. Though they may at times be studied as separate subjects, they will at others combine in a single field of observation. Such combined studies are no guarantee of a thorough knowledge of any subject, but it must be doubted whether that should be the aim of education on one day a week, and it is known that they may lead to a wider comprehension which is sometimes lacking in more orthodox curricula. Some examples of these combined studies may be briefly described.

132. The local survey is based on an interest in local activities which can be extended to national and world events which have had their influence in bringing about the local conditions. Such a survey, it will be noted, gives scope for the use of language, for modelling, drawing and craft, and is a useful means of bringing the college into contact with the community. The material used will include parish registers, local names, civil organisation, religious life, transport, architecture, medical services, educational provision, folk-lore and customs, climate, soil, crops, stock-raising, dairy-produce, fauna and flora, geology, industry and government. Work of this kind is always open to the charge of being little more than the amassing of miscellaneous information without any purpose behind it. The method is, of course, no more immune from mishandling than any other method. In the right hands it can lead to a real grasp of the meaning of the students' environment.

133. Another possibility is to select some single large topic and to study it in various aspects. Transport, for instance, could be treated as a simple historical investigation or as a study of human enterprise in the scientific, industrial and colonial fields. The material is plentiful and much of it is immediately available to all, as the following list shows: Roman roads, early tracks, turnpikes, bridges, fords, county councils and the roads, roads and the growth of towns and villages, coaches, motor cars, omnibuses, the early history and growth of railways, influence on coach-makers, innkeepers and horse-breeders,


[page 41]

tunnels, rails, signals, sailing ships, navigation, Lloyds, steam ships, fuels, rivers, canals, balloons, airships, aeroplanes. The difficulty is not to find material but to select which material is relevant to the particular approach adopted.

134. A third possibility is to take a single subject and to study its application to various types of human enterprise. Mathematics would offer a very wide range of possible studies of this kind, from the mathematics of the household, the sports field and retail trade to that of navigation, bridge construction and aerodynamics. It may be mentioned in passing that experience in the A.T.C. has shown that many boys, who were considered "bad at mathematics" at school, have made striking progress when they approached the subject from a specialised angle in which they were already interested and which involved their future careers.

SCIENCE

135. The place of science will always be important but its treatment will vary from college to college. Where the majority of the students are engaged in one kind of occupation, as for instance in the country or in coal-mining areas, it may prove best to link the science studies fairly closely to such occupations. Where no such homogeneity exists a more general course will be needed. It will be important to avoid, on the one hand, a syllabus based on such subdivisions of science as physics, chemistry, mechanics and biology which are fields of specialist study generally unsuitable for compulsory further education, and, on the other, a haphazard approach which would reduce the subject to the level of "lectures on popular science". There are certain underlying principles that must be inherent in any good science syllabus, the importance of exact observation, of basing conclusions only on evidence, of careful recording and checking, and of properly controlled experiment. These principles may be learned through the use of a very great variety of material, much of it outside the boundaries of what is usually called science. They may be learned through a local survey as well as through laboratory experiments, through an activity such as gardening as much as through a subject such as physics. If those who plan the syllabus will keep this in mind they will avoid the dangers mentioned above and will give their students a scientific attitude of mind rather than a mass of information.

ART

136. The difficulty of planning an art syllabus, lies first in the great variation of ability and talent that will be found among the students and secondly in the very large number of activities that can be properly designated as art. There will be some students whose natural gifts are so considerable that it may be best for them to go to a central college where they can receive expert instruction in technique, and others who have little or no taste or ability for the practice of art.


[page 42]

Again there will be some who wish to paint, others who are interested in fabric-printing or interior decoration or modelling and others who, without having much creative ability, are yet appreciative of good design and colour. Some will be attracted by the more technical processes such as dyeing and weaving and printing, and some by sketching and drawing. With some the interest in art will be closely bound up with interest in some particular craft, while with others these two interests may be quite separated. In such circumstances no generalisations can usefully be made except to say, first, that in each college there should be as great a variety of materials and media for the students' use as can reasonably be provided and secondly that all students should learn something of the meaning of good design and be helped to recognise it as much in houses, furniture, books, clothes and utensils as in painting and sculpture. They must learn not only to be makers of art but also to discriminate between good and bad design. It is difficult to overestimate the effect which success in the latter direction might have on the future of the industry and architecture of this country.

MUSIC

137. The teachers of music may find themselves faced with a dilemma. With so little time available are they to aim primarily at the performance of music or primarily at teaching their students to be good listeners? In some colleges, it is to be hoped, there will be orchestras which may meet voluntarily in the evenings, but not much instrumental work can be done during the periods of compulsory attendance. Choral societies, too, will be mainly evening affairs. During the elective periods musical societies will meet for discussion, for listening to the gramophone and the wireless, for actual playing, for the performance of glees and madrigals, and, where circumstances allow, of instrumental works. For those who like music there should be no difficulty in providing opportunities for performing it and for listening to it. The question to be answered, however, is whether there is to be music for all, whether music is to appear regularly on the timetable. The answer must depend chiefly upon the music teacher. If he or she has the full support of the principal and is able to interest the bulk of the students either in listening or in performance or in both, well and good. If not it will be better to preserve music as an elective and voluntary activity. Music has an almost universal appeal but the appeal is at many different levels, some of which may be too high for the majority and others too low to be worthy of the colleges and their aims. A taste for "swing" music may be more capable of developing into a taste for symphonies than some of those who have it believe, and a too austere standard may do more harm than good, but a standard there must be and an attempt should be made to raise the general level of musical appreciation by increasing the scope and thoroughness of musical knowledge.

138. This chapter may be concluded with a word on the implied rejection of the academic tradition in the methods here advocated.


[page 43]

It is significant that the word academic has become in many quarters almost a term of abuse. Anyone who has benefited from an academic training will disagree with such a view and deeply resent its implications. The truth is that the academic tradition is a good one for those for whom it was designed but that there are many, including some who have been educated in the tradition, for whom it is quite unsuitable. It is not the only, nor is it the oldest, instrument of education. Before the introduction of compulsory education people who did not attend school succeeded in learning much and in producing much. The work of mediaeval and renaissance craftsmen hardly suggests a widespread lack of skill and taste. No revival of the old, lost folk-culture is either desirable or possible, but much may be learned from it about ways of learning, standards of achievement and about the concrete approach to ideas. It may still have something to contribute to a mechanised world.

X THE SPECIAL NEEDS OF GIRLS

139. A great deal that has been said in the previous chapters applies equally to boys and girls and it would be mistaken to segregate them too much. Many interests are shared by them both and there has been in the past, perhaps, too much emphasis on domesticity for girls and too little for boys. However that may be, what follows here is confined to the consequences of two factors only: first, the place in life of women and their unique function in the home; and, second, there being certain occupations which are normally undertaken by women and not by men.

140. For the average girl who has left school at 15 and become a wage-earner, the independence that money gives her and the prospect of marriage in the future are her main preoccupations. Girls of the more intellectual type, with the ability to hold positions of initiative and skill, whose sex development is often more retarded, find their jobs satisfying in themselves and will no doubt be ready to grasp opportunities of improving their position by further education. But girls who from circumstances, lack of training or low intelligence find themselves in repetitive jobs are mainly interested in the prospect of marriage which seems to offer a release from work of a routine character. Such girls form the majority of 15-year-old school-leavers, and all of them are future home-makers. Their own happiness, as well as the good of the community, requires that they should be much better equipped for this particular career than many who undertake it at the present time.


[page 44]

THE NEED FOR A PERSONAL APPROACH

141. The 15-16-year-old girl is intensely concerned with herself, her health and appearance, her manners, style and dress and more dimly perhaps with future domestic responsibilities. There is clearly a wide field here for further education which girls are anxious to receive, though they may not be able to put their wishes into words. If it is given to them under the old schoolroom titles they may fail to recognise its value, but they will be eager for it if it is clearly related to their needs. They want to know how to look well and keep well, how to avoid infection and to choose the right food. They would be glad to learn about the value of fresh air and exercise, the bad effect of fatigue and the good effect of posture in producing an attractive appearance. They would appreciate reliable advice on the care of the skin, eyes, teeth and hair and on sleep and play, advice which is not scolding or admonitory, but is concerned with good looks and efficiency. They are often anxious and half-informed about sex, about their relations with boys and the vaguely understood connection between "having a good time" and the menace of disease. They are interested in how to buy and how to look after clothes and in the effect of line, colour, cut and decoration on individual figures. They may not relish formal lessons in cookery but they might be attracted by a fresh approach, such as cooking for social occasions, gas-ring cookery and catering and budgeting for a solitary girl. They will wish to acquire knowledge and skill when there are solid practical reasons for acquiring them.

142. As the girls grow older they will be ready for a more adult approach than that which has just been described. The study of health may then become more impersonal and develop gradually into a study of biology, human reproduction, the care and education of children, the planning of a home and the part played by the individual in the life of a community. The personal approach to dress will be succeeded by more advanced study, for some tailoring, for some fine needlework, for others children's clothes, for others again a study of design in relation to dress. In the same way cookery may, in the later stages, develop beyond its purely practical significance, but no development in this or in anything else will be successful if it has not a practical bearing on life and if it cannot be turned to good account in everyday affairs.

143. It will be clear that this kind of instruction demands first that the surroundings provided by the college must be in harmony with the teaching given and secondly that the staff must be suitably qualified by personality and experience to give it. If the demand for health education is to be satisfactorily met it must be by an approach which is neither amateurish nor half-hearted. The instruction must be in the hands of carefully chosen people and given through well-studied teaching methods. Where, as will often be the case, the permanent staff are unable completely to meet this need there must be opportunities for the girls to receive instruction from a suitable


[page 45]

doctor or psychologist and from visiting teachers who can interest them and can advise them on matters of vital importance to them at this stage of their lives. Again, the instruction connected with dress and appearance must be given by teachers who can set an example in such matters to the girls and who really know what the girls want to find out. Girls who are asked to make garments which they know to be dowdy and not up to their own standards will prefer to dawdle over some uninspiring knitting or mechanical piece of embroidery.

DOMESTIC STUDIES AND HOME MAKING

144. All the domestic study should be planned with the full realisation that girls of 15 to 18 are faced, for the first time, with a responsibility for their own welfare and often lack the knowledge to act and behave as they would wish. If the teacher faces this situation and keeps all instruction in touch with the personal needs of the girls, introducing topics only when it is clear that they will have some meaning for them, the scheme will be a success. It is not difficult to exact an artificial standard of achievement which disappears soon after the student is withdrawn from instruction. The test of success will be that this should not happen.

145. Emphasis has been laid in this chapter on the needs of the unintellectual type of girl, partly because such girls will form a majority of the students and partly because they are more difficult to provide for by the use of traditional methods. Two points require mention in this connection. The kind of work outlined is not unsuitable for the more mentally alert type of girl. Home-making for her is just as important as it is for everyone else. She will enjoy it as much as her slower companion, but she will be ready sooner for more advanced work and she will be able to go further. Secondly it must not be supposed that the unintellectual type of girl should spend all her time on domestic studies. Education of all the four types described in Chapter VIII must be given to her in such a way that she will understand it. A girl who works in a dull job and who perhaps comes from a dull home will be more lifted out of herself by mastering one physical skill, by learning to dance, or sing or dive or skate really well than by any amount of domestic work, however well planned and taught. As much as anyone she will need such experience as taking part in a play or singing in choir and belonging to a club or society and should be the last to be deprived of it.


[page 46]

XI THE SPECIAL NEEDS OF RURAL AREAS

146. Most of what has been said hitherto has been of general application and without particular reference to town or country. For a number of reasons it seems desirable to say something of the special problem of part-time education in rural areas. About one-seventh of the school children of England and Wales live in the rural parts of country areas and part-time education for these when they leave school will involve special problems of organisation and of planning the curriculum. The former are problems of collecting together in satisfactory units an unevenly and thinly spread population engaged in a variety of occupations, some of them seasonal and most of them more or less dependent on agriculture, and the latter the problems of relating the work done in the colleges with the occupations of the students and with the traditional and fundamental life of the countryside.

147. It has already been suggested that the general solution for the thinly populated area is a residential college, but there are many rural areas which are close to large centres of population and it may be useful here to go into rather greater detail. It is essential that whatever arrangement is adopted should ensure the establishing of large enough, units to justify adequate premises and staffing and satisfactory courses of instruction. Small units are relatively much more expensive and less efficient and they necessitate the use of part-time teachers with a consequent waste of time and energy. A daily unit of 120, that is of 600 students a week, is the lowest which will allow of moderate efficiency, while it is clear that a larger unit is much to be preferred and in most areas this should be possible. Exceptionally it may be necessary to establish colleges with a daily unit of 80.

148. A county authority may provide for its rural part-time students in four different ways. It may send them to a day college on the outskirts of a small town. It may establish residential colleges of the kind mentioned in Chapter III. It may combine the residential college with the day college by building a hostel at the latter or it may attach a day college to some existing community centre or, just possibly, to a senior or secondary school, though for reasons already given this is in many ways undesirable.

THE RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE

149. The first possibility requires no consideration beyond what has already been said elsewhere. The second, the residential college, taking four or five successive groups of students for periods of eight


[page 47]

weeks or for two separate periods of a month each in the year, would serve a wide area and at the same time would enable authorities to provide general and vocational training for agriculture and its allied industries. When not in use for part-time courses the residential colleges could serve a variety of other useful purposes. Once the residential principle is accepted, distance from home, within the county boundaries, does not matter materially, and it might be found advisable to plan the colleges, partially at least, on specialist lines, one perhaps with an emphasis on agriculture, or even on some special branch of it, another with an emphasis on home-making and so on. The possibility of two adjoining county authorities combining to establish a residential college for some more specialised side of farming, e.g. agricultural engineering, must not be overlooked. In any case, it is unlikely that one pattern will be suitable for all areas.

150. The day college with a residential hostel attached to it has the great advantage of enabling county authorities to organise a larger area of the countryside on a one-day-a-week basis and, at the same time, to provide for smaller residential groups. A college with a day group of 100-120 students and a residential group of 60-80 could carry a full-time staff large enough to give a good range of training.

COLLEGE AND COMMUNITY CENTRE

151. The fourth possibility, that of combining further education and secondary education in one building, should not be adopted without a close scrutiny of its probable consequences. A combination with a community centre is much to be preferred. The problems and outlook of further and secondary education are so different that their premises should be kept separate wherever possible.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF RURAL LIFE

152. What has already been said in Chapters VIII and IX applies as much to rural areas as to urban ones, but living in the country has certain drawbacks and certain advantages that will have their special effects on the curriculum that the students will require. The drawbacks are mostly economic and it may be hoped that these will become less common in the future than they have been in the past. Shortage of houses, poor standards of accommodation and lack of the kind of amusements that young people now desire are also material factors and their effect has been to drain the countryside of its population. The cure of this evil is not primarily the concern of the colleges but they will contribute to it if they can help their students to understand and appreciate the life of the countryside and to interest themselves in its social and economic structure. Against the drawbacks just mentioned must be set the great educational advantages of country life, which is made up of the most ancient and fundamental habits, occupations and interests of man - the soil, the growing of crops, the raising of livestock, the production of foodstuffs, the habits of wild creatures, the seasons and the changing face of nature. Education


[page 48]

sprang from these very things and is deeply rooted in them. They still form natural centres of interest and an understanding of the principles underlying them is the core not only of vocational training, but of all science and much learning. The curriculum of the colleges in country districts must make the fullest possible use of the material that they provide. In all four divisions of the curriculum - physical, practical, general and elective - there should be evident recognition that the college is in the country and of it and that the country is the background of the students' lives. The greenwood may be gone, the marshes be drained and the hills be invaded, but the country is still a living reality and the colleges can do much to keep it so and to bring back life where it has become moribund.

153. The sites and buildings of the county colleges will reflect their nature. There must be a large garden and adequate ground for experimental and demonstration plots as well as for a playing field. A "garden shed" or workshop, a potting shed and greenhouses will be needed in addition to the ordinary teaching accommodation. The staff, too, must be, if not in all cases country men and women, at least interested in country life, and the specialist teachers of science and housecraft must have first hand experience of farming, gardening, and the peculiar problems of the country home. In colleges offering more vocational courses it is imperative that the staff should include teachers holding good qualifications in agriculture and horticulture. In view of the limited time which the students can afford to devote to routine practical work, there should be a separate staff to look after the grounds which, in some cases, may include a smallholding.

XII. CONCLUSION

154. This pamphlet about the future has been written under the shadow of events which lie "between the desire and the fulfilment". Only when they are past will it be possible to translate the suggestions made here into action. When that time comes the pioneering instinct which has always been strong in the British people will be given many opportunities and, doubtless, the very newness of the county colleges will make an appeal to vigorous and original minds. Considerable emphasis has been laid upon this newness but it is equally true that the colleges will derive much from the experience and traditions of the past. The aims that have been formulated for them are as old as liberal education itself. The educational traditions of the country, individuality, craftsmanship, scholarliness, and freedom from rigid codes, will meet and influence each other in a way that has never been possible before. They will provide an opportunity for the young people of this country to make better use of their powers and to give better service to humanity; to learn, in short, the real relationship between rights and obligations and between work and happiness.


[page 49]

APPENDIX I

JUVENILE EMPLOYMENT FOR AGE GROUP 14-18 YEARS
1939

[click on the image for a larger version]


[facing page 49]

APPENDIX II

INDUSTRIAL AND REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF OCCUPIED POPULATION 1931

[this diagram was printed on a fold-out sheet between pages 48 and 49:
click on the image for a larger version
]


[page 50]

APPENDIX III

STATISTICS OF SCHOOL-LEAVERS FOR ENGLAND AND WALES
1938




[page 51]

APPENDIX IV

EDUCATION ACT 1944, SECTIONS 43-46

County Colleges

43. (1) On and after such date as His Majesty may by Order in Council determine, not later than three years after the date of the commencement of this Part of this Act, it shall be the duty of every local education authority to establish and maintain county colleges, that is to say, centres approved by the Minister for providing for young persons who are not in full-time attendance at any school or other educational institution such further education, including physical practical and vocational training, as will enable them to develop their various aptitudes and capacities and will prepare them for the responsibilities of citizenship.

(2) As soon after the date of the commencement of this Part of this Act as the Minister considers it practicable so to do, he shall direct every local education authority to estimate the immediate and prospective needs of their area with respect to county colleges having regard to the provisions of this Act, and to prepare and submit to him within such time and in such form as may be specified in the direction a plan showing the provision which the authority propose to make for such colleges for their area, and the plan shall contain such particulars as to the colleges proposed to be established as may be specified in the direction.

(3) The Minister shall, after considering the plan submitted by a local education authority and after consultation with them, make an order for the area of the authority specifying the county colleges which it is the duty of the authority to maintain, and the order shall require the authority to make such provision for boarding accommodation at county colleges as the Minister considers to be expedient: the order so made for any area shall continue to regulate the duties of the local education authority in respect of the matters therein mentioned and shall be amended by the Minister, after consultation with the authority, whenever in his opinion the amendment thereof is expedient by reason of any change or proposed change of circumstances.

(4) The Minister may make regulations as to the maintenance government and conduct of county colleges and as to the further education to be given therein.

Duty to attend County Colleges in accordance with College attendance notices

44. (1) This section shall come into operation on such date as soon as practicable after the date determined by Order in Council under the last foregoing section as the Minister may by order direct.

(2) It shall be the duty of the local education authority to serve upon every young person residing in their area who is not exempt from compulsory attendance for further education a notice (hereinafter referred to as a "college attendance notice") directing him to attend at a county college, and it shall be the duty of every young person upon whom such a notice is served to attend at the county college named in the notice in accordance with the requirements specified therein.

(3) Subject to the provisions of the next following subsection, the requirements specified in a college attendance notice shall be such as to secure the attendance of the person upon whom it is served at a county college -

(a) for one whole day, or two half-days, in each of forty-four weeks in every year while be remains a young person; or
(b) where the authority are satisfied that continuous attendance would be more suitable in the case of that young person, for one continuous period of eight weeks, or two continuous periods of four weeks each, in every such year;
and in this section the expression "year" means, in relation to any young person, in the case of the first year the period of twelve months beginning with the first


[page 52]

day on which he is required by a college attendance notice served on him to attend a county college, and in the case of every subsequent year the period of twelve months beginning immediately after the expiration of the last preceding year:

Provided that in respect of the year in which the young person attains the age of 18 the requirements specified in the notice shall be reduced to such extent as the local education authority think expedient for securing that the attendances required of him until he attains that age shall be as nearly as may be proportionate to those which would have been required of him during a full period of twelve months.

(4) If, by reason of the nature of the employment of any young person or of other circumstances affecting him, the local education authority are satisfied that attendance in accordance with the provisions of the last foregoing subsection would not be suitable in his case, a college attendance notice may, with the consent of the young person, require his attendance in accordance with such other arrangements as may be specified in the notice, so, however, that the requirements specified in the notice in accordance with such arrangements as aforesaid shall be such as to secure the attendance of the young person for periods amounting in the aggregate to 330 hours in each year, or, in the case of the year in which he attains the age of 18, to the proportionately reduced number of hours.

(5) Except where continuous attendance is required, no college attendance notice shall require a young person to attend a county college on a Sunday or on any day or part of a day exclusively set apart for religious observance by the religious body to which he belongs, or during any holiday or half-holiday to which by any enactment regulating his employment or by agreement be is entitled, or, so far as practicable, during any holiday or half-holiday which is allowed in accordance with any custom of his employment, or between the hours of six in the evening and half-past eight in the morning:

Provided that the Minister may, on the application of any local education authority, direct that in relation to young persons in their area or in any part thereof employed at night or otherwise employed at abnormal times this subsection shall have effect as if for the reference to the hours of six in the evening and half-past eight in the morning there were substituted a reference to such other times as may be specified in the direction.

(6) The place, days, times, and periods, of attendance required of a young person, and the period for which the notice is to be in force, shall be specified in any college attendance notice served on him; and the requirements of any such notice in force in the case of a young person may be amended as occasion may require either by the authority by whom it was served on him or by any other local education authority in whose area he may for the time being reside, so, however, that the provisions of every such notice shall be such as to secure that the requirements imposed on the young person during each year while he remains a young person shall comply with the provisions of the last three foregoing subsections.

(7) In determining what requirements shall be imposed upon a young person by a college attendance notice or by any amendments to such a notice, the local education authority shall have regard, so far as practicable, to any preference which he, and in the case of a young person under the age of 16 years his parent, may express, to the circumstances of his employment or prospective employment, and to any representations that may be made to the authority by his employer or any person proposing to employ him.

(8) The following persons shall be exempt from compulsory attendance for further education, that is to say -

(a) any person who is in full time attendance at any school or other educational institution (not being a county college);
(b) any person who is shown to the satisfaction of the local education authority to be receiving suitable and efficient instruction either full-time or for such times as in the opinion of the authority are equivalent to not less than 330 hours instruction in a period of twelve months;
(c) any person who having been exempt under either of the last two foregoing paragraphs did not cease to be so exempt until after he had attained the age of seventeen years and eight months;

[page 53]

(d) any person who is undergoing a course of training for the mercantile marine or the sea fishing industry approved by the Minister or who, having completed such a course, is engaged in the mercantile marine or in the, said industry;
(e) any person to whom, by reason of section 115 or section 116 of this Act, the duties of local education authorities do not relate;
(f) any person who attained the age of 15 years before the date on which this section comes into operation, not being a person who immediately before that date was required to attend a continuation school under the provisions of the Education Act, 1921.
If any person is aggrieved by a decision of a local education authority given under paragraph (b) of this subsection, he may refer the question to the Minister, who shall give such direction thereon as he thinks fit.

(9) If any young person upon whom a college attendance notice has been served fails to comply with any requirement of the notice, he shall be guilty of an offence against this section unless he proves either -

(a) that he was at the material time exempt from compulsory attendance for further education; or
(b) that he was prevented from complying with the requirement by reason of sickness or any unavoidable cause; or
(c) that the requirement does not comply with the provisions of this section.
Administrative provisions for securing attendance at County Colleges

45. (1) For the purpose of facilitating the execution by local education authorities of their functions under the last foregoing section, the following provisions shall, on and after the date on which that section comes into operation, have effect, that is to say:

(a) every young person who is not exempt from compulsory attendance for further education shall at all times keep the local education authority in whose area he resides informed of his proper address;
(b) any person by whom such a young person as aforesaid is employed otherwise than by way of casual employment shall notify the local education authority for the area in which the young person resides when the young person enters his employment and again when he ceases to be employed by him, and shall also notify the authority of any change of address of the employer, and, if known to him, of the young person, which occurs during the continuance of the employment;
and any person who fails to perform any duty imposed on him by the foregoing provisions of this section shall be guilty of an offence against this section.

(2) The local education authority by whom a college attendance notice is served upon any young person shall serve a copy thereof upon any person who notifies the authority that the young person is employed by him.

(3) The Minister may by regulations make provision as to the form of college attendance notices, as to consultation and the exchange of information between different local education authorities, as to the issue of certificates of exemption in respect of young persons who are exempt from compulsory attendance for further education, and generally for the purpose of facilitating the administration by local authorities of the provisions of this Part of this Act as to attendance at county colleges.

(4) The Minister and the Minister of Labour shall issue instructions to local education authorities and to local offices of the Ministry of Labour respectively for ensuring due consultation and exchange of information between such authorities and offices.

(5) Any certificate of exemption in the prescribed form purporting to be authenticated in the prescribed manner shall be received in evidence in any legal proceeding, and shall unless the contrary is proved, be sufficient evidence of the fact therein stated.


[page 54]

Enforcement of attendance at County Colleges

46 (1) Any person guilty of an offence against either of the last two foregoing sections shall be liable on summary conviction, in the case of a first offence against that section to a fine not exceeding one pound, in the case of a second offence against that section to a fine not exceeding five pounds, and in the case of a third or subsequent offence against that section to a fine not exceeding ten pounds or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one month or to both such fine and such imprisonment.

(2) It shall be the duty of the local education authority in whose area the young person in question resides to institute proceedings for such offences as aforesaid wherever, in their opinion, the institution of such proceedings is expedient, and no such proceedings shall be instituted except by or on behalf of a local education authority.

(3) If, in furnishing any information for the purposes of either of the last two foregoing sections, any person makes any statement which he knows to be false in any material particular, or recklessly makes any statement which is false in any material particular, he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding twenty pounds or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or to both such fine and such imprisonment.

(4) Without prejudice to the provisions of any enactment or rule of law relating to the aiding and abetting of offences, if the parent of a young person or any person by whom a young person is employed or the servant or agent of any such person has conduced to or connived at any offence committed by the young person against either of the last two foregoing sections, the person who has conduced to or connived at the offence shall, whether or not any person is proceeded against or convicted in respect of the offence conduced to or connived at, be guilty of the like offence and punishable accordingly.




[page 55 (unnumbered)]

Publications of the

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION

GENERAL

A GUIDE TO THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF ENGLAND AND WALES. (Pamphlet No. 2.) 1945. 1s. (1s. 1d.).
THE EDUCATION ACT, 1944. 2s, (2s. 2d.).

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION

THE NATION'S SCHOOLS: THEIR PLAN AND PURPOSE. (Pamphlet No. 1.) 1945. 6d. (7d.).
PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS (GRANT CONDITIONS) REGULATIONS. (S.R. & O. 1945, No. 636.) May 1945. 5d. (6d.).
CIRCULAR No. 30. March 1945. Deals with the Regulations, and in particular with the qualifications of teachers in maintained schools. 1d. (2d.).
CIRCULAR No. 32. March 1945. Deals with new conditions for Direct Grant recognition of certain grammar schools. 1d. (2d.).
BUILDING REGULATIONS FOR PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS. (S.R. & O. 1945, No. 345.) March 1945. 6d. (7d.).
MEMORANDUM ON THE BUILDING REGULATIONS. April 1945. 6d. (7d.).
CIRCULAR No. 10. November 1944. Deals with the Building Regulations. 1d. (2d.).
REPORT OF THE NORWOOD COMMITTEE ON THE CURRICULUM AND EXAMINATIONS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 1943. 1s. 6d. (1s. 8d.).
REPORT OF THE FLEMING COMMITTEE ON THE PUBLlC SCHOOLS AND THE GENERAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 1944. 1s. 6d. (1s. 8d.).
STANDARD CONSTRUCTION FOR SCHOOLS. Post-war Building Studies No. 2. (Ministry of Works.) 1944., 6d. (7d.).
REPORT OF THE LOVEDAY COMMITTEE ON THE PROVISION IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS OF COURSES PREPARATORY TO AGRICULTURAL EMPLOYMENT. (Issued jointly with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.) 1945. 3d. (4d.).

MEDICAL SERVICES, SCHOOL MEALS AND MILK

HANDICAPPED PUPILS AND SCHOOL HEALTH SERVICES REGULATIONS. August 1945. 4d. (5d.).
CIRCULAR No. 41. April 1945. Deals with the Regulations. 2d. (3d.).
PROVISION OF MILK AND MEALS REGULATIONS. (S.R. & O. 1945, No. 698.) June 1945. 1d. (2d.).
CIRCULAR No. 34. March 1945. Deals with the Regulations. 1d. (2d.).


[page 56]

TRAINING OF TEACHERS

REPORT OF THE McNAIR COMMITTEE ON THE TRAINING AND RECRUITMENT OF TEACHERS AND YOUTH LEADERS. 1944. 2s. (2s. 3d.).
CIRCULAR No. 18, December 1944, 1d. (2d.). This and BOARD OF EDUCATION CIRCULAR No. 1652, May 1944, 2d. (3d.), deal with the scheme for providing intensive "emergency" courses for men and women demobilised from the Forces or released from civilian national service.
TEACHERS' EMERGENCY TRAINING (STUDENTS' GRANTS) PROVISIONAL REGULATIONS, 1945. 1d. (2d.).
TEACHING AS A CAREER. For men and women released from H.M. Forces and other forms of National Service. 1945. 3d. (4d.).

FURTHER EDUCATION

FURTHER EDUCATION GRANT REGULATIONS, 1945. (Draft.) 2d, (3d.).
REPORT ON COMMUNITY CENTRES. 1944. 9d. (10d.).
BUILDING CRAFTS. (Pamphlet No. 4.) 1945. 1s. (1s. 2d.).

YOUTH SERVICE

THE YOUTH SERVICE AFTER THE WAR. Report of the Youth Advisory Council. 1943. 6d. (7d.).
THE PURPOSE AND CONTENT OF THE YOUTH SERVICE. Report of the Youth Advisory Council. 1945. 4d. (5d.).
POST-WAR YOUTH SERVICE IN WALES. Report of the Welsh Youth Committee. 1945. 4d. (5d.).
YOUTH REGISTRATION IN 1942. (Cmd. 6446.) 1943. 6d. (8d.).
YOUTH IN A CITY. Educational Pamphlet No. 117. 1943. 2d. (3d.).
SIMPLE HEALTH HINTS. Notes for the use of Youth Group Leaders. Revised October 1943. 3d. (4d.).

SCHOLARSHIPS AND AWARDS

REGULATIONS FOR SCHOLARSHIPS AND OTHER BENEFITS. (S.R. & O. 1945, No. 666.) May 1945 1d. (2d.).
CIRCULAR No. 26. March 1945. Deals with the Regulations. 1d. (2d.).
FURTHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING PROVISIONAL GRANT REGULATIONS, 1945.1d. (2d.).

Prices in brackets include postage

Obtainable from
HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE
at the addresses on outside back cover
or through any bookseller.