INDUSTRIAL TRAINING IN GREAT BRITAIN

Abstract

The period since the Second World War has been one in which almost all Western countries have accepted the maintenance of a high level of employment as one of the first principles of economic policy. However, this has generally meant, inter alia, shortages of skilled manpower. Of course, Britain is not the only country to have suffered from such shortages nor the only one to be concerned at the apparent inability of the existing voluntary training arrangements to solve the problem. Severe criticisms of the traditional pattern of industry‐based apprenticeship training as the main method of preparing young people for skilled work have been made in Britain on the grounds that such on‐the‐job training was comparatively inefficient, that there was little form of quality control to ensure a reasonable standard of training, and that it fostered restrictive practices by increasing the barriers between one skilled trade and another. Criticisms were also voiced that too many employers were merely content to ‘poach’ skilled labour rather than carry out the necessary training themselves and that formal apprenticeship agreements were mainly limited to males in certain craft trades which tended to deprive females and males entering other occupations of systematic training.

Citation

Pettman, B. (1974), "INDUSTRIAL TRAINING IN GREAT BRITAIN", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 63-83. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb013758