Crowther, Industry and the County Colleges … 2

Abstract

At least it can be said that the Minister of Education has made definite decisions. Whether the reasoning behind them can be considered valid is another matter, largely dependent on how aware one can be about the pressure groups influencing Government policy at the highest levels. No date has been fixed for raising the school‐leaving age. School buildings will have to be adequate to meet the needs created before a date can be fixed. Time is required for experiments with extended courses, and to gain experience in curriculum planning and teaching methods. The teaching force would have to be expanded rapidly at a time when it is difficult to recruit sufficient student teachers, when the training course is being extended to three years and when the increased birth rate is causing serious problems of over‐sized classes in under‐staffed schools. The first priority is to be the rapid reduction of over‐sized classes. Crowther considered all these situations and exposed the difficulties adequately, but his committee still decided on recommending the raising of the school‐leaving age in one of three stated years. It would be interesting to know what new evidence or what additional wisdom was brought to bear on the Minister which was not available to Crowther either within his committee or from the assessors who were advising the committee. The need for more part‐time day release has been re‐emphasised. The Minister is to discuss with his colleague the Minister of Labour the possibility of granting adolescents up to the age of 18 the right to have day release for further education. The incentive value of this device to recalcitrant industries, firms and employers cannot be taken too seriously. As a gesture it is not really very exciting. Even the least cynical can hardly imagine a dull, under‐motivated youngster from the home of an unskilled manual worker not himself interested in further education, demanding day release from an unsympathetic employer. The Report itself was more realistic and much more in touch with real situations. More day release for further education is absolutely necessary to obtain the best contribution for economic development from the kind of young person who will be the craftsmen and technicians of the next twenty years. Compulsion on employers may run counter to our traditions and to the way we like to do things, but experience has shown that freedom to release does not have the necessary effect. It is more than naive to pretend that further exhortation will change the attitude of any large section of industry not now concerned with supporting the further education by which it lives. Much of industry will continue to take out of the national pool without putting in, until something stronger is introduced than the right of a boy or girl to claim day release. In some ways the suggestion is so unrealistic that it is difficult to understand what it will mean in practice.

Citation

MacLennan, A. (1960), "Crowther, Industry and the County Colleges … 2", Education + Training, Vol. 2 No. 5, pp. 4-7. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb014818