E.—2.

year's duration in preparation for some particular industry. That is not to say that the further general education of such pupils is entirely neglected ; some attention is given to it, but the main emphasis is placed on workshop instruction, with such theory as is considered necessary consistent with the aim of producing units of labour having a definite skill and capable of being of immediate value to industry. Such schools have been established with the full knowledge and consent of the Board of Education and their operation has earned the praise of the staff Inspectors of the Board ; apparently the interest of the processes themselves has a liberalizing and humanizing effect upon the students, who, for the most part, might be supposed to be drawn from the lower intellectual stratum of the output of the primary schools. It is, however, proposed in the Spens report to take the best of such schools and to elevate them to the position of technical high schools. (b) Trade Schools Proper. —These are not known in New Zealand, but have been established on the Continent of Europe, notably in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, and also in Amcrica. In England such schools are usually associated with heavy industries and with large firms or corporations, and the instruction given appears to approximate to some extent to the ideals of the technical high school. On the Continent of Kurope, however, trade schools take the place of apprenticeship entirely, and students trained in them take their places in industry without any additional period of learning or instruction. It is clear that such schools cannot be conducted under the same conditions as those which are pre-vocational in outlook. Expenses are much heavier; equipment must be complete and of up-to-date type ; there is 110 room for obsolete or even obsolescent equipment in such a school, so that replacements must be made as fast as industry sets the pace. There is the problem, too, of large quantities of raw material which, in the course of instruction, are converted into articles of commerce. This output must either be wasted or disposed of in such a way as to cause the least disturbance to industry and marketing organizations. In France and Switzerland the trade schools are financed not from the funds voted for education, but from funds raised by specific taxation and placed under the control of the Ministry of Trade and Commerce. It is difficult to say how successful trade schools would be if started in New Zealand ; they are, or seem to be, desirable in periods of depression or in periods of immediate recovery when the demands of employers for suitable labour are unsatisfied. On the other hand, in periods of long-continued prosperity, employers as a whole do not want apprentices, partly for fear that depressions may recur and partly because in existing industrial conditions the apprentice is not a remunerative economic unit; employers in these circumstances do not want to be bothered with boys, but quite illogically they expect a supply of skilled labour to their hands when the economic angle demands such supplies. There are several reasons why the trade school of the Continental type will not transplant easily into this Dominion. In the first place, the tradition of apprenticeship, deep-rooted in a past which bred the guilds of superior craftsmen and which was renowned for its master and servant associations, dies a lingering death in a land whose people cherish those traditions. But hard facts can outweigh sentiment; and the trade schools would surely displace apprenticeship as a means of training the youth of the country in industrial processes if the demand for them were sufficiently great. Trade schools differ from apprenticeship, however, in much the same way as mass factory production differs from shop enterprise. For the apprentice there are as many types of training as there are employers ; but the variation in trade-school training is limited to the number of trades. The apprenticeship system is useful, therefore, where the trade is characterized by individualism and where each employer covers a broad field of activities ; the trade school, 011 the other hand, is more suited to a localized concentration of particular trades or branches of trades or where specialization is intense and opportunities for experience over a range of processes are few. It cannot be said that this stage of localization and specialization has yet been reached in New Zealand. The largest industrial concerns are undoubtedly the Government Railway Workshops, where the apprenticeship system, with reasonably assured employment, is still in force, but where also the rudiments of a trade-school training are developed. No one locality supplies the whole of New Zealand with any product, and even if that were the case the market is relatively so small that a school might not be justified for the labour involved. Our greatest manufacturing industry is the dairying industry, with a market several times larger than the local one. Here, despite the inevitable spread of factories throughout the country, we have something more than the germ of a trade-school idea in the specialist courses provided, both short term and long term, at the agricultural colleges. The same method might apply to arable or sheep farming, but that the expense of training is as yet only warranted in the case of those who will be the proprietors and not the servants. In New Zealand the technical-school system has developed in a land where trade training was provided through apprenticeship, and accordingly technical work has been directed towards preparing the way for apprenticeship in the day school and supplementing it in the evening school. As has already been pointed out, there is now considerable congestion in the schools in respect of their first function, and much uncertainty in respect of the second, because of the changing nature of apprenticeship. It is necessary for technical schools on the one hand and for industry 011 the other to take note of these facts, and to be ready to provide and support those changed conditions that will lead with least confusion from the era of the apprentice as we know him, involving the personal contract between one employer and one trainee, to whatever system will ultimately be found best suited to our needs. But as all our instincts and traditions drive us to move slowly along the line of industrial development, so our school system will slowly but surely change; but the time of the trade school is hardly yet.

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