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Readers Write on Transport Training

26th February 1965
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Page 73, 26th February 1965 — Readers Write on Transport Training
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

A Prime Interest

TOUR article "The Desperate Need for Improvement in

Transport" in the February 12 issue has no doubt been widely read with great interest by all connected with transport. Transport education facilities, as your special correspondent rightly says, are a prime interest of this Association, and much is being done and progress made in tackling the problems posed in your article.

As a professional body, which in particular covers the industrial field, we feel this is very much our concern and is part and parcel of our aim to improve the status and recognition of the transport management profession. A great deal must also depend on the desire of an adequate number of students to take up the studies on which so much of their future could depend.

The Industrial Transport Association has the machinery available to cater for the students. In addition it welcomes the interest of employers who are enlightened enough to see the desirability of encouraging the training of their transport staffs and transport managers of the future.

All inquiries on educational matters from those genuinely interested are Welcome at our headquarters address, or via our honorary divisional education officers throughout the country.

London, E.C.2, G. DOUGLAS, Secretary, Industrial Transport Association.

Most Timely Series

YOUR initiation of a new series of articles on transport training and education is most timely. I hope they act as a catalyst, engendering interest in the advantages derived from practical training schemes, and ensuring the close association of those parties interested in the implementation of education and training programmes.

Certainly, the contents of The Commercial Motor of February 12 were thought provoking, S. W. E. BEAVAN, Hon. Education Secretary, London Division, Industrial Transport Association.

Complete Reappraisal Needed

I WAS most interested to read your edition of February 12, I particularly the articles on "Training in Transport ''.

When a young man comes to me for advice regarding taking up transport as a career, I am in somewhat of a difficulty. It would be less than honest to promise him anything but hard work, long hours, considerable study, and until he is 40—and even then accepting a degree of luck—a salary in excess of £1,500 p.a.

It is my considered opinion that transport training and the rewards of one's daily work in the transport industry walk hand in hand, and I am extremely loath in accepting conditions now appertaining in the road transport industry to recommend any young man to take up this profession. This is even leaving aside the vexed question of nationalization. May I illustrate my point with two concrete

examples. In a recent edition of the Daily Telegraph the following advertisement appeared:—

Again, recently, in the Thstilute of Transport, a job was advertised for an assistant distribution manager who, to say the least, would have been a miracle man to have had all the attributes required in transport knowledge at the age of 24. Side by side with these advertisements one reads in the Daily Telegraph and the journal of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries of positions which give young men, after passing one professional examination, 13,000 p.a. plus car.

What is required is a complete reappraisal of the transport industry as it affects both training and the filling of administrative transport positions. First, all youngsters should have the opportunity of going to a commercial centre, for example a county town, where they could learn transport in the evening taught by qualified practical transport men. This presupposes that classes will be convened each year and carried on irrespective of numbers. 1 have had the unfortunate experience of sending my assistant to night classes which closed down half way through his course. Needless to say, this is extremely bad psychologically and against the nation's welfare economically when such obtuse subjects such as egyptology and morris dancing carry on.

The other requisite of correct training, as you so rightly point out in your magazine, is that teachers must be trained and I am appalled that no member of your learned " Brains Trust" staff journals have pointed out that teachers' technical training colleges exist whereby a person who has passed his transport examinations can be trained to teach his knowledge; for example, the one that readily springs to mind is Garnett College in London.

May I now pass on to the actual examinations; here again several points arise. What is the good of obtaining pieces of paper by the payment of an amount to an official body; it is time this practice was stopped. The examinations should be written and oral and should be in three stages. First, the Royal Society of Arts Road Transport Diploma stage. Second, the Institute of Transport examinations and third, a transport degree at university level should be instituted. In my opinion the certificate of transport does not go far enough. No one should be appointed to teach any of the syllabus of the foregoing body unless he holds the requisite teachers' training certificate. This now leads automatically to the obtaining of a position in the road transport industry. A director of a company can readily appreciate that a piece of machinery costs, for example, £1,000. What he cannot appreciate usually is the fact that the vehicle carrying the machinery, if it is a low loader, for example, could cost anything up to one-tenth of that sum to hire and use for a typical journey.

Propaganda should be made by all the relevant road transport bodies to their sister associations, such as the Federation of British Industries, to raise the standard of transport and traffic managers and to try to point out to employers' associations the uneconomical risk they take when they appoint, for example, the 24-year-old graduate to handle what is in essence a practical difficulty such as a traffic department, where human relationship and flexibility rule the day.

To put the matter in its true perspective may I point out that there is not one transport class in the whole of Cheshire for students, nor do education authorities appear to be the least concerned in the two large cities adjoining —Liverpool and Manchester—whether transport students are correctly catered for or not.

Winsford, Cheshire. 3. REES, Traffic Manager, Distribution Centre, Dunlop Footwear Ltd.

Lack of Good Textbooks

I READ with interest your article on education in trans' port. I am a first-year student of the graduateship in transport examination set by the Institute of Transport.

I attend evening classes in three subjects (elements of transport, evolution of transport and English) twice a week. This examination seems to be primarily prepared for people who have an interest in transport, rather than a course suggested by employers for future administrators. I am employed by B.R.S. Parcels Ltd., who pay my fees.

Even so, my attempts to pass this examination may well be frustrated because of the serious lack of good textbooks. Apart from the cadet scheme operated by B.R.S. there is no substitute for experience. I wish to emphasize that B.R.S. give every help possible to young employees.

Transport cannot afford to wait for a demand for transport training. A market must be created, as the need

desperate. University courses will only half solve the problem and the Institute of Transport must redesign its courses with the help of the industry. Creating an intelligentsia is all very well, but there must be a body for the

head. There must be three qualities in our industry: ability, general and practical knowledge, and thorough training.

London, N.6. TRANSPORT STUDENT.

Degree Course Needed

I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree with the idea of a first

degree course to boost the status of transport. Furthermore, I would like to see such a course open to students of transport who have gained or reached a certain standard of education in transport.

These courses are very often confined to A-level candidates and this policy seems to me to exclude the type of candidate who has gained a recognized technician's or full technological certificate and who is employed in transport of one form or another. The idea of a weekly column devoted specifically to transport education and its problems is very good indeed and long overdue, and I look forward to the series.

Newbury, Berks. A. G. PALMER. B40


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