Off with blazers and on with aprons is the routine which marks a change of lessons at the Rushden Boot and Shoe School.

It runs on lines something like those laid down by Mr. Sears, who first taught his boys to spell the word "horse" and then sent them out to groom the animal.

Here, in the classroom, the boys are told what goes on in shoe factories, and then they go into the school workshops and practise the different stages of manufacture.

The school was opened in 1928, and today is equipped with all the machinery of a modern factory. Its full-timers in the Secondary Technical School, are boys who are bound for one or another of the local shoe factories when they reach school-leaving age. They come from the secondary modern schools in Rushden, Wellingborough, Raunds and Irthlingborough at the age of 13, and along with grammar and maths they learn their trade.

The factory school is viewed with enthusiasm by these 13-year-olds. The whirring machinery and businesslike tools are a welcome break from exercise books. And the boys like to be using their hands.

Clicking

In the clicking room, two of the second year day school class look business-like in shirt sleeves and white aprons. Several of the boys in this class had already decided they are going to stick to the clicking room when they start work next year.

In the clicking room, they learn pattern cutting and with the job of clicking, the quality of different segments of skins, and how to cut them economically. Skin patterns decorating the walls, which at first glance look like the trophies of a hunting expedition, are there to point out the difference between belly and shoulder.

Racks of shoes in various stages of completion bear witness to the work that goes on in the Making and Finishing Room, where the boys practise on some £10,000 worth of machinery. They begin with "exercise work" using odd scraps of leather, and eventually graduate to making slippers and walking shoes, which are sold.

In the laboratory they learn the science of materials, and the processes of testing.

They are joined in the afternoons by beginners from the factories, who consider it a "change from the factory."

Girls from the closing rooms, learning machining as a whole instead of the particular job they do for a living, find "current affairs" lectures the most interesting. They are released two afternoons a week to take the course.

Now, just to complete the training, trade unionism is being added to the curriculum.

There are 700 vacancies for boys and girls in the shoe factories of Northamptonshire. Many reasons have been advanced for the shortage of recruits to the staple trade; other industries, it has been said, have more to offer. But work in the shoe industry need not be a dead end job. Special schools at Kettering and Rushden offer technical instruction during working hours with full pay, and manufacturers promise progressive training in all departments. These pages show young people getting acquainted with the industry.