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carpenters' award permits of additional wages being paid to apprentice carpenters who attend approved classes at a technical school and pass satisfactorily an examination at the end of the year. This practical recognition by employers of a lad's effort at self-improvement, and therefore increase of efficiency, will doubtless offer strong inducements to apprentices to attend a, technical schoo], and although the results attained may not be so satisfactory as would be the case if the student attended classes during the day, the fact that the value of technical instruction has received recognition of a practical nature and that encouragement of this kind has been given augurs well for the future, Another very important movement is that taken by tho Council of the New Zealand Institute of Architects in connection with the training of the young men for the architectural profession. At two centres classes for architects' assistants have boon established, and the course of instruction is arranged to meet the Institute's requirements, and it may be expected that as soon as the Council's plans have been perfected a succession of students in architecture will be assured at the larger schools. The opinion is expressed, based on an intimate knowledge of the technical schools of the Dominion, that so far as the technical training of apprentices and young mechanics is concerned under present conditions of training the classes, speaking generally, have reached the limit of their usefulness, and the question arises as to whether we are to rest satisfied with our present conditions, and make the best of them by perpetuating them, or whether the lessons which have been brought home to us so forcibly by the present war shall be taken to heart, and a forward movement inaugurated. The time is past for any questioning of the value of technical training. It is accepted on every hand, and we believe rightly, that such training provides a means of raising the efficiency of the individual as a worker, and of enhancing his value to the community in this and other respects, and the only obstacle to the placing of this training on a completely satisfactory basis appears to be focussed on when and how that training is to be given. That this cannot satisfactorily be accomplished as at present by the attendance of students at evening classes is almost universally accepted in this and other countries by those who may be regarded as best able to pass an authoritative judgment on such matters. It requires little imagination to realize that the average growing lad who works from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., necessitating an early start from home in the morning, a hurried return, a hurried dinner, and preparation for commencing class-work at the technical college at 7 p.m., is not in a physically fit condition to apply himself fully to concentrated mental effort for two hours and attain the best results. Employers in Great Britain and other countries who are thinking about the problem of technical training on broad lines have long ago come to the conclusion that if they and their apprentices and young craftsmen are to get full value from attendances at a technical school the technical training will have to be done when the lad's mental powers are in a more active and retentive condition than they are after a day's hard work at vice or machine. Some of the broaderminded employers have accordingly made provision for the attendance of these lads at classes held during the day by allowing time off, in some instances going so far as to establish classes in their own works, providing the class-room and the whole of the apparatus, including instruments and drawingmaterial, the instruction being given by members of the staff of the local technical school. Something on similar lines has been done in the Australasian States. In Victoria, for instance, apprentices from the Newport Government Railway Workshops attend the Melbourne Working-men's College on two afternoons of each week, and the apprentices at the Sunshine Harvester Works are allowed time off during the day to attend the Sunshine Technical School. The Colonial Ammunition Company also makes a similar concession. So far this aspect of technical training has only received academic consideration in the Dominion, the reason being that employers do not appear to have fully realized that technical training is an integral part of industries, and divorced from them it is practically meaningless and useless; consequently there is no recognition of the real function of the technical school and its relation to the trades and industries of a district. In connection with some of the technical colleges advisory committees or boards of control, composed of masters and men representing particular trades, have been set up, and serve admirably to bring employers and employees, and consequently the trades concerned, into close relationship with, the school. Provided that such bodies were composed of men who were not prepared without due consideration to accept the present-day relationships of the industries and the technical, college as quite satisfactory and final, and who wave, themselves thoroughly familiar with tho technical requirements of the industry they represented, and of the best way in which the technical college could meet those requirements, something might bo done to show employers that it was worth while making the sacrifice of a small immediate return by allowing apprentices time off to attend classes, in view of the larger return that intelligent and well-trained operatives must bring to them later on. So long as industries are organized on the principle that all the thinking and planning and arranging must be done at the office end, and the valuable asset that is to be found in intelligent, thoughtful, and resourceful workmen is ignored, the association of an industry and tho technical college will be a. loose one ; but when tho efficient workman is assessed at his full value, and the working-conditions are arranged to permit him doing his best both in the workshop and the technical class, the technical school and the industry will co-operate in the most effective way. It has been said that " something approaching an industrial revolution will bo necessary before the training of the apprentice can be put on a satisfactory footing," and if this " industrial revolution" can bo directed so as to take the form of a reorganization of the industries of the Dominion with a view to making it a sine qua non that every young industrial worker shall receive technical training as part of his trade training, then such should be welcomed. The opinion is, however, expressed that what is needed should be effected by evolutionary rather than by revolutionary processes, and if a Government Department would " blaze the trail," or even follow the lead given by the Victorian Government, and inaugurate-the necessary day technical training of its apprentices

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