724 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
hoping to become foremen and managers, chiefly from higher elementary and 
secondary schools. Engineering and bakery trades chiefly dealt with. These 
only provide for the few bright boys and only touch the fringe of the question. 
Schools of Type (c).—-For boys who will enter trades at between fifteen and 
sixteen years of age, suitable for the mass, and providing preparatory trade 
training ; specialisation deferred to the last year. Such schools are safest under 
modern conditions in that too early specialisation and late age of entering trades 
are ayoided. No special ability is required. Fundamental principles relating to 
handicraft are taught ; no attempt is made to replace workshop experience, but 
merely to shorten period of learning a trade. Practical mathematics, science, 
drawing, and workshop practice in relation to various groups of trades are taught. 
The opinion of manufacturers is in favour of better trained workers, of whom 
they say there is a scarcity. 
The State and educational authorities for many years have failed to grapple 
boldly with the question of providing better opportunities for the training of the 
industrial workers. There has been an indecision of policy; first we had a few 
day classes in the same subjects and under the same syllabuses as those suitable 
for evening classes in science and art; next the organised science schools under 
similar conditions, which were really not organised schools; these were improved, 
and we had what became known as Division ‘A’ type of schools, which were 
afterwards transferred from the management of South Kensington to Whitehall on 
the reorganisation of the Education Department to a Board of Education, The 
Division ‘A’ type of schools was squeezed out of existence by the Regulations for 
Secondary Schools, and clause 42 of the Regulations for Evening Schools was 
introduced as a means of dealing with schools of types other than secondary. 
Lastly, we had the Higher Elementary School Minute, and by a process of 
evolution we are coming to the trade schools of various types. 
The several types of trade schools are better suited to the needs of the times 
and are more needed than hicher elementary schools. These trade schools, in 
close connection with or in technical institutes, and working under clause 42 of 
the South Kensington branch of the Board of Education, will be a greater 
success than any schools under the regulations of the Whitehall branch—that is, 
they should be administered under codes drawn up by those who are intimately 
in touch with development in technical work. 
To get the full value out of such trade schools there must be reform in our 
scholarships system and in our elementary schools. The reforms most needed in 
our elementary schools are smaller classes, a simplified curriculum, fewer special 
subjects, more correlation, and improvements in the teaching of arithmetic, which 
must be taught in connection with geometry from an early age and be combined 
with manual work. Manual work must form a real part of the school work and 
not be looked upon as a special subject. 
Close co-ordination is needed between the work of the elementary school and 
that of the trade school, so that children will enter them better prepared between 
thirteen and fourteen years of age, and one year’s work of the trade school course 
will be saved. 
The important general principles to be considered in the establishment and 
management of trade schools are :— 
(a) Plan the school course to permit boys to enter any given trade at the 
right age. 
(6) Co-ordinate the work at the beginning with that of the elementary school 
if possible, and vice versd. 
(c) Co-ordinate the last year’s work with the system of apprenticeship followed 
in the trade to avoid waste of time. 
(d@) Watch the labour market in order to guard against mistaken specialisation. 
(e) Secure the right kind of teacher. 
Properly managed by co-operation of parents, teachers, employers, and trade- 
union leaders, there will be no opposition. An adequate supply of well-trained 
teachers in touch with the requirements of trade is necessary to teach the science 
