GROUP TRAINING
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W1TH the appointment of a director of training by the Road Transport Industry Training Board earlier this month following shortly after the appointment of the Board's directorgeneral, transport operators and other establishments coming within the scope of this Board will soon be affected by its activities. Already a beginning has been made in building up the register of establishments, estimated at 92,000.
However, while this vital administrative work at the Board's headquarters continues, both now and in the future there will remain the need for initiative on the part of the industry itself, whether as individual units or collectively, to effect an improvement in the quality and efficiency of training.
With the advent of the Industrial Training Act early in 1964 and the subsequent setting up of successive training boards-18 is the present score, with more than 30 as the ultimate objective —a misapprehension could arise that thereby industrial training was being "laid on". This would be unfortunate in the extreme.
Admittedly in meeting the Act's requirements a board can decide whether or not to provide training facilities itself or arrange for other organizations and educational institutions to do it. But by far the greater proportion of increased training throughout trade and industry is expected to result from the encouragement given to employers to conduct their own training. Indeed this is a prime purpose of the grants scheme which is an inherent object of the Act, with the levy providing the means for such grants. Where employers do conduct their own training, the function of the board will be to ensure that the quantity and quality of training are adequate to meet the needs of the industry for which they are established.
Such inspection and certification as to adequacy should not be allowed to inhibit any initiative on the part of the employers to conduct their own training and, to this end, it is useful to take a look at what other training boards are doing in this respect.
In this series on February 10 I reported on the experience gained by the Construction Industry Training Board in setting up the first large scale school in the UK for plant operators. The CITB includes more than 56,000 firms and 1,400 local authorities and the number of employees involved is about 1.75m, compared with about lm. covered by RTITB.
The Construction Board soon found that there was an absence of training of plant operators of civil engineering equipment which might cost £10,000 or more. To remedy this deficiency the Board set up its own training centre at Bircham Newton, near King's Lynn, Norfolk, on a former RAF site. All courses are residential and ultimately it will be possible to accommodate 500 trainees at one time, with a fee of about £60 for each trainee for a two-week course.
Contrasting with this residential training centre set up directly by the board concerned, is a new group training centre I visited at Feltham, Middlesex, which comes within the scope of the Engineering Industry Training Board. This particular Board, incidentally, was quickly off the mark, being set up in July 1964, only a few months after the Act became law. Accordingly it has already built up considerable experience in the training field and, while the type of training provided may not be directly comparable to that required in road transport, the experience gained in the setting up of the Feltham centre could prove useful to road transport operators who are about to be faced with similar problems.
First, as to the circumstances in which the need arose for such a centre, there is an affinity with road transport. Many of the 30,000 constituent firms of the Engineering Board are comparatively small despite the giant organizations which may come more readily to mind.
Training is no less important for these smaller engineering firms than for their larger competitors. But it is almost certainly a more exacting operation. Often it can best be achieved if a group of small firms come together to set up viable training units such as the one at Feltham. But an all-important factor here is that the firms concerned came together under their own initiative though, admittedly, aided by the foresight and strong personality of those responsible for the initial organization.
The Feltham training centre is run by the Hounslow Engineering Group Training Association, consisting of more than 40 relatively small companies with engineering interests. When being shown around the centre by Mr. W. H. Hall, chairman of the Association, himself an engineering employer, I was struck by the speed with which the centre had been set up and the obvious drive and initiative which that rate of progress implied.
The first meeting of employers on the possibility of forming the group took place on March 31 last year, and six months later the Feltham training centre was opened to the first students. During that period a suitable building had been acquired, adapted for use as a training centre and equipped with a wide range of engineering machines such as lathes, drills, grinders, etc., at a cost of over 180,000.
The shop floor measures 250ft. by 75ft. and is oil-heated, while there are two lecture rooms, a drawing office, canteen and administrative offices. The lectures relate to the working of machines installed at the centre and their purpose. But purely academic subjects such as mathematics and actual theory are not covered as the trainees attending the centre also spend a proportion of their time at technical college.
In reply to my question as to how the centre was set up in so short a time, Mr. Hall, obviously a man of strong personality, said that this had been achieved simply by having a group of men agreed on their objective and determined to achieve it. Given that background the means had been facilitated by the appointment of small but active sub-committees specializing on design, plant, finance and staffing.
This centre is the largest in the south of England and is designed ultimately to accommodate 200 trainees. There are about 100 at present and places have been reserved for 140 for next September. Because it was one of the first training centres of its type it represented a big challenge to the group of employers who assessed its viability and put their decision to the test. But after the centre had been set up it became the responsibility of the staff to ensure its successful running and, to find out just how this was being done, I interviewed Mr. D. R. Benyon, the superintendent.
Mr. Benyon has a staff of nine instructors and the normal working day is from 8.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. Training at the centre consists of first-year training for engineering craftsmen and technicians as recommended by the Engineering Industry Training Board. Day release for further education is provided at Isleworth Polytechnic and other colleges in the area.
In effect, therefore, on leaving school the trainee attends the centre for systematic basic training away from the company that employs him. During the first year the trainee is paid at full company trainee rates. At the end of the first year the trainee joins his company for the second and subsequent years of his traineeship.
The training scheme consists of three parts: induetion, acquisition of basic skills, and initial development of special skills. The induction lasts for three months and acts as a bridge between school and industry, providing an introduction to the ways of work and instruction in hand skills.
The acquisition of basic skills gives the main groundwork for manipulating and forming metal and other engineering materials using hand and machine tools. The initial development of special skills provides an introduction to specialization in electrical, instrument, mechanical and fabrication engineering.
During their first year all trainees are released for a minimum of one day a week for study at a technical college in one of the following courses: engineering craft, general course on engineering, engineering technicians and ordinary national certificate in engineering.
But although the trainee in his first year spends all his time at the training centre and local college, Mr. Benyon told me that some employers insist that their trainees go to their premises on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning to maintain contact and to discuss problems.
In addition to the capital grants to cover the cost of equipment and installation at this group training centre, the Board makes a grant to employers of £504 for each trainee during first-year training at the centre and an extra off-the-job training place grant to the Association of £150 per year up to a maximum of five years. The fee charged to the employer by the Association is £425 per year. In effect, therefore, there is a balance of £229 granted in excess of the cost of training which the employer receives to offset his payment of wages and any college fees in respect of the trainee. However, Mr. Benyon told me that as the number of trainees passing through the centre increases it is hoped that the fee of £425 charged by the Association to employers will be reduced, possibly to £350 or even £300, so implementing the balance available to the employer. Incidentally, the present rate of levy raised by the engineering board is 24 per cent on the payroll.
In reply to my question as to how the cost of sending trainees to the Feltham centre was likely to compare with providing one's own training, Mr. Benyon said that this was difficult to assess. Under normal conditions it was not an economic proposition for a small employer to provide his own training which was the very reason why this group training scheme had been set up.
Additionally, even if one did set up one's own training centre the amount of grant provided would depend on the standard of training given so that it would be difficult to assess in advance just what the comparable economics would be. But on a purely practical level, bearing in mind the shortage of good training staff, it would just not be a proposition for many small employers to train their staff.
With obvious implications as to what could apply in road transport industry, the Engineering Board has so far aided the formation or 70 new group training schemes, making a total of 132 now in existence, providing training for about 10,000 trainees. Schemes with workshops built or equipped by the Board were opened at five centres last year and further workshops are shortly to be completed at a number of other centres.
In the engineering industry it is recognized that group training schemes enable small to medium-size firms to enjoy the same training facilities as larger firms. To this end the Engineering Board recognizes that encouraging their formation is an important activity in its training programme and it will be widely extended in the future.
Mr. Benyon said that when their staff establishment was completed they would have a group training officer whose specific purpose would be to liaise between the companies concerned on training needs during the first-year training and subsequently to ensure that their work was proving effective.
As the Feltham centre is non-residential, in contrast to the Construction Board centre at Bireham Newton, I asked Mr. Benyon what limitation this placed on the area from which they could expect to. draw trainees. While there was no stipulated radius within which the setting up of further groups would be discouraged, Mr. Benyon suggested that around 25 miles might be an acceptable distance. As the centre became fully operative it was anticipated that facilities would be provided for retraining, bearing in mind the increasing rate of industrial and technological change generally anticipated. In reply to a final question as to the avoidance of overlapping of training facilities already provided by technical colleges and similar institutions, Mr. Benyon said that relative to the ratio of practical and theoretical work at the centre, out of a working week of 40 hours, only two periods of 14 hours each were given to theoretical instruction.