Abstract
The weak position of teenagers in the labour market, the shift to service industries employing white rather than blue collar workers, the need for highly qualified workers, and the fight to improve the position of the disadvantaged make an increase in participation in post-compulsory secondary and tertiary education desirable. Increased participation in the senior years of high school should aim to give students opportunities to participate in the mainstream of economic and social activity. Revamped curricula should be seen as vehicles for achieving competency in communication — reading, writing, speaking, calculating, computing. They should involve intellectual effort and the acquisition of communication skills. The present apprenticeship system should be allowed to run down and be replaced by a comprehensive training scheme. In such a scheme, young people should be trainees and not employees. All employers should provide a proportion of places within their workforce for trainees. If more educational and training services are to be offered, it is important that all such services be offered in cost-effective ways. The continual pressure for resources to reduce class size and contact hours will place in jeopardy plans for widening educational opportunities. Top priorities should be for more resources to raise educational participation in post-compulsory schooling and tertiary education and to establish a rational training system, and for such reallocation of existing resources as is necessary to raise the minimum competencies to be achieved during compulsory schooling; until these have been achieved, demands for richer provisions per teacher or per pupil should be postponed.