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Misdirected attacks on the RTITB
Page 98
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CRITICISMS of the Road Transport Industry Training Board have been growing quite strongly over the past three months. They have come mainly from the road goods sector, although road passenger operators have also been adding their contribution. Many of the attacks are founded on apparent discrepancies and difficulties in regard to the practical working of the grant/levy scheme. The system, it is alleged, is too inflexible and throws up too many anomalies and unfair situations. I am in no position to judge the rights and wrongs of the system-indeed, it is no concern of this column.
What, however, is very much my business, is the fact that these problems are beginning to rub off on education and training. The whole rationale of training in the road haulage and passenger industry is being critically questioned. This in itself is good-education and training methods in road transport need to be kept under constant review. Unhappily, much of the "discussion" has been purely destructive and is all too often put up as a smoke screen to hide the real issues of apparent dissatisfaction with the grant/levy scheme.
To say this is an unfortunate turn of events is the understatement of the month. Just when it seemed the tide was beginning to turn with a realization of the importance of systematic training from management downwards, the whole basis of training has come under cynical fire. It seems to have been forgotten how much the RTITB has done for the industry in a very short time. There were immense problems to cope with in the early days of 1966, as for many public hauliers and the smaller bus operators, this was virtually the first time that any form of education and training has ever been really considered. Especially important has been the beginning of management training which I firmly believe is the foundation around which all other training must be built. There has been the realization, albeit slow, of making contact with the schools in order to present a truer image of the industry with the popular distortions straightened out. Much of this type of work has been fostered and stimulated by the RTITB.
The Road Haulage Association, whose interests rarely touched on education before 1966, has launched a series of most successful management seminar courses over the past two years and has ',taken up the clarion call of the need for professionalization in the industry. There has been less activity on the road passenger front. The smaller operator has slowly been turning thoughts towards schemes for education and training but the major companies have been temporarily slowed by the structural reorganizations involved in the setting up of the National Bus Company and the Scottish Bus Group.
The RTITB has rightly stressed the new situation in the operator's licence with emphasis directed towards systems of maintenance and vehicle safety, together with the need of a more businesslike approach.
Looking at the RTITB quite independently. I have found its ideas on training and education are soundly based with headquarters staff very much alive to the needs of the industry. The criticism I would make is that some of the regional staff are sent into the field without sufficient training about the industry. Further, the RTITB, rarely counts among its top priorities the training of its own staff in methods of instruction and how to lecture effectively. Too many instructors are often weak in this particular area. But these are small items to be placed on the debit side of the ledger • against a strong credit balance in education and training.
It would be tragic if so much of the spadework in training and education by the RTITB came to be overlain and overlooked by factors which are administrative rather than educational.