The basic purpose of this enquiry, which arose from recommendations made at the Fifth Commonwealth Education Conference held in Canberra in 1971, was to consider the problem of providing practical training in industry and commerce for technicians and their equivalent, so as to determine its shape and characteristics and make suggestions as to how it might be alleviated. In carrying out that assignment I therefore focused my attention on three major topics, namely, training needs, training opportunities, and the suitability of the available training. For the first of these topics I concentrated on courses of education which require complementary practical training, and tried to build up pictures of the needs, in terms of subject and level, over the next two or three years, and to estimate the trends.