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The Wolverhampton trainingcollege for technical teachersJ.H. Williams aa Wolverhampton and Staffordshire College ofTechnologyPublished online: 30 Jul 2007.

To cite this article: J.H. Williams (1962) The Wolverhampton training collegefor technical teachers, The Vocational Aspect of Education, 14:28, 3-7, DOI:10.1080/03057876280000011

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THE W O L V E R H A M P T O N T R A I N I N G COLLEGE FOR T E C H N I C A L TEACHERS

Background to the Establishment of the College

By J. H. WILLIAMS Vice-Principal, Wolverhampton and Staffordshire College of Technology

TIlE TRAINING OF technical teachers in England, a matter no less important than technical education itself, has not been and still is not regarded with the urgency it demands. The establishment of a training college for such teachers is a rare occurrence and it is opportune to review the events which led to the found- ing of the colleges and in particular the recently established College at Wolverhampton.

The early transactions of the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions show that its founders and its Council during the ten years up to 1914 were fully aware of the need for training for technical teachers yet thirty or more years were to elapse before a pronouncement leading to action on full-time training was made.

The Report of the McNair Committee (Teachers and Youth Leaders) 1944 recommended that each area training authority (i.e. university institute or delegacy for the training of teachers) should include representatives of technical and commercial education and should appoint a director of technical training to organise courses. 1

There was a short period of rapid development. Ministry of Education Circular 55 of July 19453 proposed the arrangement of full-time courses of training for technical teachers and shortly afterwards the Manchester Regional Advisory Council was asked by the Ministry to explore the possibility of setting up a permanent training college for technical teachers in its area. The Council persuaded the County Borough of BoRon to make the arrangements for pro- viding the College, which was established early in 1946. During 1945 the Manchester Regional Advisory Council had sponsored a part-time course for technical teachers which was certainly the most thorough-going course of its kind provided in England up to that time. The course was directed by Mr. A. J. Jenkinson, who was to become first director of Bolton Training College?, 4

It is interesting to note this pattern of development in establishing the first full-time college, a pattern which, it appears, was not followed nor needed to be followed, as the national need was evident, in establishing the second college, in London, later in 1946 and the third college, at Huddersfield, in 1947. After that year no further college was to be established until 1961. Indeed a proposal, in 1953, to close one of the colleges and concentrate the student-teachers coming

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4 Woh, erhampton Technical Teachers' College

forward in the other two had to be strenuously resisted. Inadequate grants to students giving up their jobs in industry for teacher-training and the fact that such training has never been compulsory for entry into technical college teaching have always been adduced as reasons for the slow development of training. The first of these reasons necessarily implies the second.

It is perhaps curious that with three colleges only to serve the country two should have been established in the North of England and that the Midlands, and in particular the West Midlands, containing Birmingham and the densely industrialised conurbation of the Black Country should not have held one of the three colleges from the beginning. Technical Teacher Training had not been overlooked in this region. The Colleges and the Regional Advisory Council realised the need for it. Evening and week-end courses had been held for many years and in 1952-53 a part-time day-release course for full-time technical teachers was provided by the Birmingham Education Authority at the City College of Commerce and directed by a former technical college principal, Dr. W. E. Fisher. It is interesting to note that during this course the City and Guilds Technical Teacher's Certificate was established and the Birmingham course students became the first eandidates. Day-release courses of a similar pattern had previousIy been sponsored by the East Midlands Regional Advisory Council at Nottingham in 1952 and by the North-West Regional Advisory Council, at Preston and Manchester in the same year.

A day-release course was, however, not provided again in the West Midlands for several years, but from 1954 onwards the Teacher Training Panel of the West Midlands Regional Advisory Council became increasingly concerned about the lack of training facilities in the Region. The present writer, who had come to Wolverhampton from the staff of BoRon Training College, was urged by the Panel to direct courses, subject to the approval of the Wolverhampton Authority and, as this approval was forthcoming, part-time day courses were provided at the Wolverhampton and Staffordshire College of Technology in 1957 and 1958. These courses ran on one day a week from January to June with eleven technical college teachers taking part in each year plus a number of army instructors in the second year. The students took the City and Guilds of London Institute Technical Teacher's Certificate Examinations. Towards the end of the first of these courses the Willis Jackson report on the Supply and Training of Teachers was published and contained the expected recommendation that when a fourth technical teacher training college was established it should be placed in the Midlands. 5 This was a further stimulus to the Technical Teacher Training Panel of the Advisory Council which asked the writer to prepare a memorandum which should 'examine the possibility of a (technical) college or colleges in the Region being invited to concentrate on such training courses with suitable staff appointments'. Mr. W. L. Cottier, C.B.E., then H.M. Staff Inspector for Technical Teacher Training, who was actively interested at each stage of development, made valuable suggestions, and the memorandum was presented to the Panel in December 1957. It proposed various alternative arrangements

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J. H . W I L L I A M S 5

which might be made pending the establishment of a training college. These were (1) a training department within a technical college, organised to provide courses for the whole Region, or (2) a specialist training section within a technical college department, or (3) training facilities within a college department depen- dent on borrowed staff. It will be clear that these alternatives were in descending order of desirability and the disadvantages of (2) and especially of (3)--the system then operating at Wolverhampton for part-time day courses--were strongly emphasised. The purpose of the exercise was indeed to point out that nothing less than a specialist department or team was needed and it was proposed that this should be financed by pool arrangements. The Memorandum was submitted by the Advisory Council to the Ministry.

During the currency of the 1958 part-time day course at Wolverhampton, the Ministry, writing to the Secretary of the West Midlands Advisory Council, referred to the Memorandum and to the desirability of improving the training of in-service teachers through the provision of one-term courses at the three training colleges and, as a special case, at a centre in the West Midlands. One criterion in approving the centre would be that the local education authority would be interested in running a fourth training college as a permanent institu- tion. The Regional Advisory Council proposed Wolverhampton as the centre, Ministry representatives approved the arrangements to be made there, and the authority was authorised to provide a ten weeks' full-time course in the summer term of 1959. Consultations took place between Ministry representatives, the Wolverhampton Director of Education, Mr. G. W. R. Lines, Principal R. Scott of the Wolverhampton and Staffordshire College of Technology, the present writer and directors and principals concerned with the three existing training colleges. At about the same time informal discussions were held between the Wolverhampton representatives and the professors of education of Birmingham University with which the 'training centre' was to be associated.

Ten week courses, financed from the Training Colleges Pool, were provided in 1959 and 1960 in a separate building. They were directed and staffed, as the part-time day courses had been, mainly by the Wolverhampton and Staffordshire College of Technology. In effect that College had built up since 1954 through its provision of City and Guilds Teacher's Certificate courses (evening and part-time day) a team of enthusiastic lecturers in applied methods. The maximum number of students which could be accommodated for the ten-week course--twenty-two --was recruited in the first year and twenty-one in the second year--twice the number which had been recruited to the displaced part-time day courses.

After the first of the ten-week courses the Minister decided to accept a recommendation of the National Advisory Council for the Training and Supply of Teachers that a fourth training college should be established in the industrial Midlands provided he was satisfied that there were good prospects of building up within a reasonable time a college of some 250 places (as a total of one-term plus one-year students) and further, of creating even in the short term, a unit of viable size, say of 150 total places. In making this known to the West Midlands

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6 Wolverhampton Technical Teachers' College

Advisory Council the Minister went on to seek the advice of the Council which, he recognised, would have to make some inquiries as to probable support, in the West Midlands and in the adjoining East Midlands and South-Western Regions. On the basis of the replies received, the advice of the Advisory Council to the Minister was

(1) Initial size. That a college should be established for 'certainly 70 and most probably 100' one-year students and 30 one-term students in the first year.

(2) EventuaI size. That 200 one-year students should be the aim with 30 one- term students and with the possible addition of students in courses of a different type (refresher courses, for example).

(3) Subjects to be offered. It was suggested that the categories of student- teacher to be recuited should be in Engineering, Building, Commerce and Science.

On these proposals and in the matter of the location of the college, the Regional Advisory Council circulated its constituent local education authorities suggesting reasons favouring Wolverhampton. On geographical grounds several authorities in the Region might have made a claim for the College but in the event they did not do so and the proposals of the Regional Advisory Council on size, location, and categories of students, were submitted to the Minister. During 1960 the Minister invited the Wolverhampton Authority to make arrangements for the College, which opened with a one-term course in May 1961.

The comparison between the establishment of the first college in 1946, and of the fourth in 1961 is interesting. A regional advisory council played a part in both but in the recent case the developments were much more cautious and protracted.

It is opportune to consider the future of technical teacher training and to decide its r61e in the country's educational system. Is there to be another long waiting period before more colleges are established ? Will there be a protracted period of experiment in other regions as there has been in the West Midlands ? How many colleges should there be and what should be their size ? What is the magnitude of the training problem ? It will be best to deal with the last question first. An answer to it has just been provided in the Report of the National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers entitled 'Teachers for Further Education'. e This estimates that the full-time teaching force in technical colleges needs to be doubled (from 18,000 to about 37,000) by 1970; with allowance for wastage, an annual average recruitment of 3,600 teachers is apparently necessary. Some of these will, no doubt, be trained in university education departments or training colleges for secondary school teachers but the majority will need to be trained and will best be trained in colleges for technical teachers.

If the urgent need is to be met, more colleges--widely dispersed--will be necessary. Each highly industrialised region with many technical colleges will need a training college not only to increase total recruitment of one-year students

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J . H . W I L L I A M S 7

but also to serve in its region as a driving force in the improvement of technical teaching through a variety of courses for both full-time and part-time teachers. The Willis Jackson Report (1957) recommended that colleges should be provided for 150 to 200 students each. In fact when the decision to establish the Wolver- hampton College was made the three existing colleges together had 565 one-year students including 19 from overseas. It is significant that few of the students were from the Midlands. Married students, and these are the majority, often prefer, even when in residence, to be not far distant from their homes.

The notion of what constitutes the optimum size of a technical teacher training college needs further examination. It is very unlikely to be the same as that of a college for primary and secondary school teachers. To wait for a small number of technical teacher colleges to grow individually is not a good policy; it is a brake on general growth. A very important factor, too, is the number and accessibility, to a training college, of teaching practice places in the technical colleges; the optimum size of a training college is reached at a point before there is saturation of practice places within reasonable distance. If it is found that this optimum is smaller than the optimum from a purely economic point of view (cost per student) another factor may be taken into account. There is room for the expansion of training facilities for groups, other than teachers--youth workers and youth employment officers for example--whose work it will also be to serve the young people of the community. And there is a case, other than the economic, for training these groups alongside technical teachers.

The questions posed above which remain unanswered are those related to timing and experiment. While experiment with particular types of course will always be valuable and necessary there should surely be no delay in establishing colleges for types of course which have proved their value. The problems of doing so would be a matter for the National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers when it looks into ways and means of recruiting the additional teachers needed.

R E F E R E N C E S 1. - - (1944). Teachers and Youth Leaders. Report of Committee on the Supply, Recruitment

and Training of Teachers and Youth Leaders. London: H.M.S.O. 2. - - (1945). The Training of Technical Teachers. Circular 55. Ministry of Education.

London: H.M.S.O. 3. JENKINSON, A. J. (1946). The Training of Technical Teachers. Paper at Summer Meeting

of the Association of Technical Institutions. London: A.T.I. 4. JENKINSON, A. J. (1949). The Growth of the Training of Teachers of Technical Subjects.

Paper at Summer Meeting of the Association of Technical Institutions. London: A.T.I. 5. (1957). The Supply and Training of Teachers for Technical Colleges. Report of a Special

Committee. London: H.M.S.O. 6 . . (1961). Teachers for Further Education. Report of an Advisory Sub-Committee of the

National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers. London: H.M.S.O.

(Script received: December 6, 1961)

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