The Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions

Abstract

AT the fifth annual meeting of the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions, held on Saturday, November 6, Mr. J. Wilson, of the Battersea Polytechnic, president of the association, in moving the adoption of the annual report, reviewed the year's work. In the course of it he laid special stress upon the very important step taken by the association, at its conference at Liverpool, in putting forward a definite series of resolutions relating to educational reforms which appear to them as teachers to be essential to the continued progress of technical education. In these resolutions the association expresses its opinion that it is necessary to raise the school-leaving age to fifteen years; it asks that special attention be given to the teaching, in primary schools, of elementary science, practical arithmetic, and manual training; it calls for complete coordination of the work of the evening continuation schools with that of the evening technical schools; it asks for the provision of technical-secondary schools, including trade schools, with a generous system of scholarships, including allowance for maintenance; and, finally, it endorses the recommendations of the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commissioners respecting compulsory attendance of boys for technical instruction for not less than thirty hours per week. Thus a very definite policy in some important educational problems affecting technical education has been taken up by this association.