Student was considered and adopted. Arrangements were made for the convening of local conferences in a number of towns with a view to furthering certain of the recommendations in the Committee's published Report on Adult Education for Women. The Committee determined to conduct two new enquiries: the first into the opportunities given to adult students to pursue their studies on a full-time basis at universities and other institutions: the second into the question of Natural Science in Adult Education.

193. The first enquiry was concluded during 1926 and the Report has since been published.* The second enquiry was concluded later in the same year. The Committee thereupon determined to take as their next work an enquiry into the extent of the present provision of Adult Education (other than that given in Three-Year Tutorial Classes) and its relation to Voluntary Bodies, Universities and Local Education Authorities.

194. During the year the Report on the Drama in Adult Education, which had been the main subject of enquiry during the Committee's previous period of office, was published and attracted a great measure of public attention.

3. Public Libraries Committee.

195. The Public Libraries Committee, appointed in the autumn of 1924, continued their work under the Chairmanship of Sir Frederic Kenyon, G.B.E., K.C.B., Director and Principal Librarian of the British Museum. During the early part of the year the Committee continued to take evidence; the later meetings were devoted to the consideration of their report. Their task has been one of great difficulty. Since the Act of 1850 gave to Town Councils a permissive power to levy a small rate for the establishment of public libraries and museums, public libraries have multiplied throughout the country until at the present time 96.3 per cent. of the population live in library areas. But during these 75 years the Acts have been adoptive and not compulsory; every unit of population, from a county borough to a parish council, has been able to constitute itself a Public Library Authority. Under certain conditions these powers may lapse or be relinquished, and local government boundaries have constantly changed. In the result the task of ascertaining which local government bodies have public library powers has been a matter of great difficulty. Moreover, the library systems established by Public Library Authorities have grown according to local demands

* Full-Time Studies, a Report by the Adult Education Committee of the Board of Education, being Paper No. 7 of the Committee. H.M. Stationery Office, Adastral House, Kingsway, W.C.2. post free 7d.

Published by Price 6d. Net

and local resources, and development has followed no ordered plan. The Committee have had before them the problems of great city libraries issuing three million books each year, and those of parish libraries issuing three hundred, and they have had the task of formulating schemes which may bring the scattered resources of hundreds of libraries, each of a different character, into a national system, which shall at once secure the maximum of economy and the minimum of interference with the powers of local government bodies.

196. The Committee have devoted much of their time to preparing statistical tables which will enable each Public Library Authority to compare its administration with that of other authorities of similar size. Standard figures have been arrived at which, it is hoped, will act as a guide to Library Authorities in future. An attempt has also been made to ascertain in what degree the efficiency of a library declines as the unit of population grows smaller, and at what point efficiency becomes impossible owing to economic factors beyond the control of an authority. It is the hope of the Committee that under the scheme for an organised national service which they have outlined, no student, however poor or however remote from a library, will be denied the material of which he stands in need.

CHAPTER VII.

CHOICE OF EMPLOYMENT AND THE JUVENILE
ORGANISATIONS COMMITTEE.

1. Choice of Employment.

197. In our last Report we said that it was too early to attempt any definite appreciation of the administration of the Choice of Employment service by local education authorities under the new conditions which became operative on the 1st April, 1924. As the result of an additional year's experience of the working of the system it is now possible to make some more definite observations. The situation has also become more stable in the sense that it seems unlikely that there will be any substantial alteration in the distribution of areas as between local education authorities and the Ministry of Labour in the immediate future. Reference may be made to pages 94 to 97 of our Report for 1923-24 for particulars of local education authorities exercising powers*, and to pages 106 and 107 of the first part of the Report of the Committee on Education and Industry for the areas where Juvenile Advisory Committees have been established by the Ministry of Labour. Broadly speaking, the position is that in a majority of the County Boroughs and between one-third and one-half of the areas of non-County Boroughs and Urban Districts, the work is done by a local education authority, while in the remaining areas, including London and the majority of the Counties, it falls to the Ministry of Labour.

198. It may be recalled that the administration of the service has been placed on a new footing in consequence of the adoption of the recommendations made by Lord Chelmsford in 1921. The system has now two main features. In the first place, if local education authorities decide to exercise their powers, they are wholly responsible for the advisory and placing work in connexion with young persons under eighteen years of age, instead of sharing responsibility with the Ministry of Labour as they did before 1st April, 1924. In the second place, authorities are debarred from undertaking Choice of Employment work unless they are prepared concurrently to administer Unemployment Insurance for young

*The following have since ceased to exercise powers:-Dorset (including Weymouth), East Suffolk, Southend-on-Sea and Glossop. Essex exercises powers only in Maldon and Orsett.

↑ R port of the Committee on Education and Industry (England and Wales). First Part: published by H.M. Stationery Office, 1926, price 1s. 6d. net.

persons between sixteen and eighteen years of age. This means that the whole field of juvenile employment and unemployment falls within the purview of a local education authority if they decide to do the work at all.

199. So far as the information in our possession justifies an opinion, it would seem that local education authorities are, as a rule, administering the Choice of Employment service with efficiency and discretion, and the organisation of their Juvenile Employment Bureaux is being developed along reasonable lines. In particular, it is satisfactory to observe that progress is being made in securing the co-operation of employers and the confidence of young persons and their parents. Another point of importance is brought out by the following words in an authority's report:-"It is essential that vocational guidance shall begin in the schools. For this purpose information regarding all kinds of occupations, especially of the local industries and opportunities, should be available for the use of teachers." In this and other respects the assistance of the teaching profession is of the greatest importance and we are glad to record. our appreciation of the readiness with which it has been given, often outside ordinary working hours.

200. The development of the organisation is reflected in the numbers of vacancies filled and notified, though, as we explain below, such statistics cannot exhibit the quality or effectiveness of much of the work undertaken by an authority through its Choice of Employment arrangements. It is found that in the fifty-two weeks ending 6th July, 1925, Juvenile Employment Bureaux of local education authorities filled vacancies for 52,024 boys and 43,036 girls, representing a weekly average of 1,000 boys and 828 girls. For the fifty-five weeks ending 26th July, 1926, the corresponding figures were 59,207 and 49,655 representing weekly averages of 1,076 boys and 903 girls. Up to the period of disturbance which began with the general strike the weekly averages were 1,139 boys and 963 girls. It may be added that 67,070 vacancies for boys and 56,120 for girls were notified to the bureaux in the fifty-two weeks ending 6th July, 1925, and 73,889 vacancies for boys and 62,669 for girls in the fifty-five weeks ending the 26th July, 1926.

201. In considering these and any similar figures it must be borne in mind that in a number of areas juvenile labour is in excess of the demand. This, as several authorities point out, has often involved the placing of boys and girls in occupations which do not correspond to the aspirations of the individuals concerned, so that vocational guidance cannot in practice be made fully effective. Another point of general interest is illustrated by the report from one large urban authority which has obviously considered questions relating to juvenile employment very closely. In this area, though 593 boys and 46 girls entered the engineering trade during the year, "quite a

number of the boys left as soon as they could secure more remunerative employment." Such evidence as this indicates the necessity not merely for a revival of trade, but also for the restoration of more normal industrial conditions before the fuli benefits of vocational guidance can be realised.

202. In these circumstances we are glad to notice the determination of many authorities not to allow immediate industrial difficulties to obscure the intention and objects of the Choice of Employment Act of 1910. They recognise that the vocational guidance contemplated by that Act requires extensive knowledge of the careers and prospects of individual boys and girls after they have been placed by the bureau, and further, an intimate acquaintance with the character of local trades and industries, the openings which they offer and their power of absorbing juvenile labour. Another subject of importance is the education of boys and girls and their parents in industrial matters. A number of authorities have arranged for addresses on subjects bearing on local employment to be given at schools, or at special open meetings at the bureau, by members of the Juvenile Employment Committee or by prominent local employers. We are also interested to observe that the report from one large city mentions the use made of broadcast talks given by officers of the Education Department with a view to acquainting parents with the particulars of trades open to boys and girls.

203. The need for detailed acquaintance with local industrial conditions has a further implication. Juvenile Employment Committees are concerned in the first instance with questions relating to a particular local government area, but the industrial factors which affect those questions are rarely, if ever, localised to the extent of being confined within the boundaries of a particular authority. That being so, the need for co-operation between the authorities situated in a single industrial region and for the interchange of information and ideas, is of great importance, as indeed many of them evidently realise. We think that all authorities concerned should consider carefully the question of making definite arrangements for securing such co-operation, or the desirability of developing any arrangements which may already exist.

204. After the end of the year under review the first part of the Report of the Committee on Education and Industry was issued. A number of recommendations are made affecting the service of Choice of Employment which are of substantial importance and we propose in our next Report to deal more fully with the position so

created.

2. Juvenile Organisations Committee.

205. In our Report for the year 1924-25 reference was made to the revival of the work of the Juvenile Organisations Committee which, in June 1924, had been asked to resume its activities. In