Youth Training Urged in Britain

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 48, 27 February 1939, Page 3

Youth Training Urged in Britain

LONDON—Should young persons who are unemployed be required to attend Government training centres to help them to get work? This question is answered emphatically in the affirmative in the annual report for the year ending in September of Sir George M. Gillett, Commissioner for “Special” (depressed) areas in Britain. Sir George puts forward a scheme based upon the view that Government assistance to such persons ought to be made dependent upon the recipients’ attending instructional centres. The object is to prevent demoralization among those out of work range of useful occupation and of opportunities for ordinary wage-earning employment. At present in Britain, in cases where the local education authorities think desirable, the payment of the dole to any unemployed boy or girl between the ages of 16 and IS can be made conditional upon attendance at what is known as a Junior Instruction Centre. But this arrangement up to the present, has been only sparingly resorted to. It does nothing also for those over 18. Sir George would remedy this by making the system more general in its application and by extending it to young men and women over IS years of age. At present for these more mature individuals there have been provided in different localities in Britain about a score of what are known as Ministry of Labour Instructional Centres. Here training courses, generally of three months’ duration, are provided. Attendance is entirely voluntary and many more such centres would be needed if the bulk of the young unemployed—say up to the age of 25 —were to be required to attend them. The proposal is criticized from two different points of view. Unemployed persons say that to render compulsory such training as is already available to them on a voluntary basis, would not help in the great majority of cases, since those who are not. doing their utmost already to qualify themselves for employment are so few in number as to be practically negligible. This suggests that what is needed is to provide a system leading up to assured employment rather than the requiring of an unemployed person to travel what may in some cases be a long distance from home in order to attend a brief course of training which often proves in effectual.