The Problem of Training Apprentices with Incomplete Basic Education

In accordance with the decisions taken by the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia it is necessary to create conditions in which it will be possible for all boys and girls of school age to acquire complete secondary education if they are interested in it and have aptitudes for it. What makes the implementation of this task more difficult is the problem of apprentices with incomplete basic education. Some of the boys and girls who start their apprenticeship have completed their compulsory school attendance at a lower grade than the 9th grade of the Basify Nine-Year School. The fact that Apprentice Training Centres and Trade Schools are attended by apprentices with complete basic education together with those who have not acquired such education gives rise to difficult pedagogical problems. The establishment of common classes for apprentices with different preliminary education is one of the causes of unsatisfactory results being achieved in educational work at Apprentice Training Centres and Trade Schools training apprentices with incomplete basic education. In order to improve the present unsatisfactory state various forms of filling the gaps in the basic education of apprentices are being tried out. The best form has proved to be supplementing the basic education of apprentices in special classes or groups according to specially adapted curricula and syllabi. It is apparent, however, that none of the forms of supplementing the basic education of apprentices can fully solve the problem of apprentices with incomplete basic education. Therefore it would be necessary to solve in principle the question of education of 15-year-olds who leave school without completing their basic 9-year education.