ADULT EDUCATION BOARD AND INDUSTRIAL TRAINING BOARD

The Adult Education Board and the Industrial Training Board will be merged into a new Statutory Board on 1st April 1979. The new Board will provide training for vocations in commerce and industry, including training in the applied arts and service trades. It will also provide a wide range of part-time continuing education courses for adults (including language and general education classes) and programmes for the improvement of skilled workers.

Under the Revised Secondary Education System (RSES) the Board will provide pupils in Secondary I to III who are not academically inclined, the opportunity to go for vocational or industrial training. The training will prepare these pupils for employment as trained/skilled workers. In some cases, it will be done in two stages: before and after full-time National Service.

Training hours will be raised to 35 per week from the present 30 hours. Programmes in industrial skills will be for one to three years. They will lead to the National Trade Certificate Grade 3 (NTC 3). Trainees can return after National Service for upgrading to NTC 2.

The Board will supervise the Junior Trainee scheme which commenced in January 1977 as part of the Revised Primary Education System. The Junior Trainee Scheme will continue to provide job placement for primary (Basic Course) school-leavers complemented by an Extension Education Programme for literacy and numeracy, and inculcating good work attitudes and social responsibility. Wherever possible junior trainees are put in training schemes to give them the opportunity to develop into skilled workers. Junior trainees are expected to number some 9,000 by 1981.

The Board will have to promote and help set up apprenticeship and on-the-job training schemes so that its basic-trained graduates can develop into skilled workers. It will also have to offer advanced skill training so that workers can increase their productivity and assimilate higher-level technology. The Board will continue to consult the Economic Development Board, the Singapore Manufacturers' Association, the Singapore Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, and the National Trades Union Congress, on what skills should be taught and work attitudes cultivated. As the national authority for the testing and certification of skills, it will seek to establish national systems of certification in all vocational areas. Recommendations of the Trade Advisory Committees, and visits and discussions with industry, will ensure that training programmes provide for real needs: the overriding objective is that trainees be able to look forward to satisfying careers in their respective vocations.

The Board will expand its Placement Service to cover graduates fresh from its training institutes, as well as those completing National Service. It will continue granting Reservists in approved apprenticeship schemes a subsidy of $60 per month for two years or $40 per month for three years.

Full-time commercial training capacity will be slightly over 5,000 in 1981. Full-time industrial training capacity will increase from the present 10,000 to 16,000 by 1981. There will be a new vocational institute at Ayer Rajah (former campus of the Singapore Polytechnic) and expansion of the existing institutes. Facilities will be provided for apprentice training in patternmaking for the foundry industry, and advanced training in precision metal engineering and automotive engineering. The McNair Centralised Workshops will be developed into a junior trainee centre for the construction trades.

In the coming years the Board will try to make working conditions in its training institutes as close as possible to those the trainees will meet in their future careers. The Board also intends to provide facilities at the institutes comparable to those enjoyed in academic schools.

Much effort will go into vocational guidance and dissemination of information so that pupils, parents and the general public may have a good appreciation of vocational and industrial training.

Two additional vocational institutes with advanced training workshops will be built in Ang Mo Kio and Bedok New Towns after 1981. It is intended to progressively increase the training week to 40 hours with a training year of 46/48 weeks when the new institutes are ready. Also under consideration for the post-1981 period is a centre for training vocational and industrial training staff in both the public and private sectors; and a higher-level commercial training institute.

To achieve the objectives set out in this Addendum, it will be necessary to have a centre looking into areas such as methodology for vocational and industrial training, curriculum development, and skill and aptitude tests.

DR AHMAD MATTAR Minister i/c of Industrial Training Board and Adult Education Board