FARMING APPRENTICES AND USE OF MOTOR TRACTORS.
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AT the suggestion of the National Council of Social Service, the Kent Rural Community Council recently convened a conference in Maidstone to discuss the education and training of young persons in rural areas and to consider what steps could usefully be taken to encouiage them to enter agricultural and ancillary industries, and to provide some definite training for these occupations.
Farmers, skilled agricultural workers and representatives of the county local authorities took part in the discussion. Amongst the mare specific proposals considered was the scheme prepared by the
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Kent Education Committee for agricultural apprenticeship for lads of 16 years of age or over. Under this scheme a lad would be indentured to a farmer for a term of years, the general supervision of the scheme being in the hands of an agricultural apprenticeship subcommittee, consisting of representatives of the farmers' and agricultural workers' organizations and the local education authority. In the end a small committee was appointed to consider the proposals made and to formulate sonic practical scheme for consideration by the interests concerned.
Whilst welcoming the new departure
as being a step in the right direction, we venture to suggest to the committee the desirability of including sonic, kind of training in the hemdling of farm tractors and motor-operated agricultural implements in the suggested curriculum for farm apprentices. In many countries the use of motor appliances in place of horses for agricultural work is growing more rapidly than in Great Britain, In France, where the use of farm tractors, motor ploughs, etc., is increasing at a rapid rate, it has been feund advantageous to establish' special schools in agricultural areas for training workers in the use of such machines.