Wakey, Wakey
Page 31
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IN many respects, the 15th annual report of the National Committee on Road Transport Education is the gloomiest yet. The great majority of the figures it makes known are the lowest yet—certainly the lowest since 1952. Why? It is definitely not through lack of effort on the part of the indefatigable Mr. Raymond Birch, who is chairman, of the committee, nor on the part of his fellow-members of the committee.
So worried are the committee that they make an almost unprecedented appeal for suggestions as to how the scheme can more effectively be brought to the notice of goods transport employers and their employees, particularly among C-licensees. Disappointment is recorded at the small number of entrants from goods transport undertakings.
This apathy on the part of hauliers towards education is no new thing: the committee have commented on it in other years. The lack of C-licence interest is more surprising. The committee is concerned with the Royal Society of Arts examinations, which are aimed at the traffic employee rather than the managerial level, but a similar trend can be traced, so far as hauliers are concerned, in the Institute of Transport. Here, too, hauliers are conspicuous only by their absence.
But there is much more to it. The number of centres for the examinations has dropped from 57 in 1952 to 42. The number of candidates has almost halved-644 in 1952 and 362 last year. Municipal transport undertakings, after fluctuating between 126 and 83 entrants, found 130 students last year. (This was the sole item of cheer.) Company passenger undertakings, who supplied 141 students in 1956 and 1957, have dropped to 108. London Transport—surely an astonishing figure in view of the Executive's enlightened approach to transport education—has dropped from a peak of 225 Students in 1953 to 44.
Everyone To Blame
So it is not only the goods operators who are to blame. Everyone, to paraphrase George Orwell, is equally to blame but some are more to blame than others. What about the goods transport statistics? Well, hauliers supplied 128 candidates in 1952 and only 23 last year. C-licensees' candidates (never inspiringly solid) are down from 51 to 13 in a nine-year period. The Co-operative Societies, with a record of wildly fluctuating interest, are down from 37 to 13.
The case of the hauliers is certainly noteworthy, if in character. In 1952 they were sufficiently interested to produce 128 candidates, now only 23 (presumably including B.R.S.). Do they get so little out of the R.S.A. examinations? There are at least four subjects in the syllabus of direct interest to haulage employees. Their lack of interest in the Institute of Transport examinations is somewhat understandable--not so with the R.S.A, ones. Much more mystifying is the case of the missing C-licensees. They simply never have displayed much interest—which is rather out of character.
There is no doubt, throughout all this, that the villains are the employers. They fail to appreciate the need for industrial training, they fail to publicize it. And if, despite this apathy, employees still evince interest they fail to encourage them either with money or time off. It is an attitude that is hard to understand.
There are several possible answers to Mr. Birch's urgent plea for suggestions. Here is one. Co-opt some more solid interest from hauliers and C-licensees on the committee than just one N.R.T.F. nominee. B.R.S. have a member on the committee. Then prevail upon them to give publicity to the committee's aims in their association magazines. Wider publicity might not be a complete answer, but it would be a start.