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John Wellens argues that what we want is more confrontation rather than less, but that it should be the confrontation of ideas and not the confrontation of power.

To operate a sewing machine requires four basic skills: machine control, guiding the work with the hands, positioning several components together on the work‐table, and machine servicing. Under the ancient practice of ‘sitting next to Nellie’, a new entrant is expected to absorb all these skills at the same time. Under the analytical system, the trainee is taught one element at a time in such a way that each element is isolated. She is required to time and record her performance at every stage.

In his article in the January issue (Vol 2 No 1) John Wellens offered for consideration the view that Job Analysis can be death to the concept of creating a situation in which the subordinate manager can optimise his contribution through the exercise of initiative and decision‐making, that it is restrictive and inward looking, and is not the core activity of management training. These are powerful criticisms that must not be allowed to pass without comment, especially when so many newly‐trained training officers will have accepted this concept on the courses they attended, and may therefore feel completely confused. My own personal philosophy and strategy of management training, education and development is based on the job analysis concept, which does, however, vary from that put forward by John Wellens.

In our March issue we published an account of an interview between Sir Denis Barnes, chairman of the Manpower Services Commission, and John Wellens. Now we follow with a companion‐piece based on an interview between John Cassels, chief executive of the Training Services Agency, and John Wellens.

John Wellens' feature on developments in apprenticeship, ICT, March 1978 pp 96–100, has rightly attracted a great deal of interest even though perhaps at the expense of some embarrassment within the EITB. As one of those fortunate enough to see an advance copy of the Board's proposals I could see no reason for secrecy. The effectiveness of the ICT article is now evidenced by the proposals being published generally as Information Paper No 49 and whatever the reasons for what Wellens calls the ‘EITB Pantomime’, the proposals merit wide and urgent debate if they are to stand a chance of being implemented in time and in a form to be of benefit to young people currently at school. This paper should be regarded as a personal contribution to that debate from a practising trainer.

For me, one of the most interesting and stimulating aspects of the PHOENIX SCENARIO and the subsequent articles in Industrial and Commercial Training over the past sixteen months has been its catalytic effect on my view of subjects as diverse as: parental involvement in curriculum development; School/Industry liaison; the stimulating of small‐business activity; Course design in Continuing Professional Education; and the role of the Polytechnics. One of the major reasons, I am sure, why the Wellens approach has had this type of impact on me lies in his method of exposition. My own background and training has emphasised the traditional logical method of problem‐solving — through analysis of the constituents of a situation, selection of the major constraints, deduction of alternative solutions to remove the constraints and testing of these to arrive at the optimum solution. By contrast, John Wellens has used an almost lateral thinking methodology. Given the scope and complexity of the problems to which he has addressed himself, one can see an obvious advantage in looking separately at a series of topics first so that one can, through them, gain some appreciation of the central issues of which they are the diverse reflections. To use one of his own analogies, he has been sending up a large number of ‘trial balloons’. Perhaps the time has come when some of his readers should try to link together these ‘balloons’ to provide ourselves with enough ‘lift’ to create necessary changes. In this spirit, and hoping that if I am ‘shot down’ it will be by someone who has got a better handful of balloons to which we can all cling, I offer the following ‘connections’ on the subject of TRAINING PEOPLE WHO ARE ACTUALLY IN EMPLOYMENT.

John Wellens writes: In INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL TRAINING, August 1974, Vol 6 No 8, Mike Jones and Peter Drake, both of the Engineering ITB, wrote jointly about the importance of improving the performance of systems within organisations. Earlier, in October 1970, Vol 2 No 10, another member of EITB staff, Margaret Walker, had written an important mile‐stone article on clerical training, drawing a sharp distinction between two aspects of competence in clerical work: one, competence in the sensori‐motor skills of typing, shorthand and operating office equipment; two, the proper and accurate use of the current office procedures and systems. The point was made that, whereas effort had been put into training for the former aspect, the latter was more critical to efficient performance and had been an area of training which had been grossly neglected, not only in Britain, but almost universally.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Youth Training Scheme. The most important event in the manpower field over the past four weeks has been the publication of the MSC plans for its Youth Training Scheme which came out on 4 May. An element of confusion has been introduced into the topic owing to the fact that there are two top‐level bodies with their fingers in the pie: on the one hand there is the Government speaking through the Employment Minister and his Department; on the other there is the ‘independent’ Manpower Services Commission. Both speak with immense authority though it is the Government, in the person of Norman Tebbit, which has the ultimate upper hand.

John Wellens describes the Sugar House Apprenticeship Scheme inaugurated recently by Tate and Lyle Ltd (Thames Refinery). The movment towards ‘semi‐skilled apprenticeships’, of which this is a notable example, is, without doubt, one of the most significant and interesting feature of industrial training at the moment. It is a movement which is silently gaining strength. Information and comment from other firms engaging, or thinkig of engaging in this field would be welcome.