A Better Startin Working Life

In a consultative paper ‘A Better Start in Working Life’ published jointly by former Secretaries of State for Employment, Education and Science, Industry, Scotland and Wales proposals are made for expanding vocational preparation for 16 to 18 year olds in or about to enter employment. Apart from the fact that they are work based rather than college based, the main proposals for the development of ‘traineeships’ look remarkably like the pre‐apprenticeship schemes developed by many colleges for 15 year olds in the years leading up to the raising of the school leaving age in 1972. Traineeships would be provided by training and educational services jointly and the focal point for developing schemes would be the Industrial Training Boards. Trainees would go through an integrated programme of education and training, both on and off the job, would incorporate induction into industrial working life, main job skills and personal/social skills needed both at work and in their adult lives in general. The aim of the scheme is, and will perhaps remain, that of giving additional help to the 200,000 or more young people who each year take up jobs with little or no provision for skill development and would, within a voluntary framework helped by grants, aim at providing one third of new entrants to employment with vocational preparation within three years of the start of the programme. Educationists have little by way of motive for critising this type of proposal, in principle or even in this specific case in matters of detail, but a number of additional matters might be included in final proposals.