The Renault Apprenticeship Centre

The traditional and official attitude towards technical training in this country is that it is the duty of industry to train its own skilled workers with the help from technical colleges that industry may ask for in certain directions. This means that a large number of apprentices, especially in small firms, receive no systematic training to speak of, whilst those who serve apprenticeships with progressive firms offering sound schemes of industrial training often have no time for more than a pitiably small amount of continued general education. In France, however, there have grown up a large number of Centres d'Apprentissage, or ‘apprenticeship centres’, under the aegis of the Ministry of National Education, where about 200,000 boys and girls now receive a sound technical training accompanied by continued general education. Usually, the course lasts for three years, and the weekly programme of forty hours consists of about twenty hours' technical training and twenty hours' general education. Revenue from the apprenticeship tax which all French employers have to pay is devoted to these centres, and large undertakings are authorised to run their own centres subject to inspection by the Ministry.