Technician Training At Leyden University

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31088, 17 June 1966, Page 14

Technician Training At Leyden University

New Zealand scientists, particularly those in the universities, are becoming increasingly interested in the training of technicians for their departments. Dr. T.-J. Seed, a senior lecturer at the University of Canterbury, has reported on a scheme which impressed him in Holland. The Leyden Instrument Makers’ School is part of the famous Kammerlingh Onnes Laboratory at the University of Leyden.

This school takes 90 to 110 pupils on a five to eight-year programme, depending on the standard of education at entry. Those with only primary schooling must stay the full period but those with lower and upper technical school qualifications enter at the third or fourth-year level. The full programme has five years’ general technical education and then a threeyear advanced course. From the fourth year pupils spend 12 hours a week on theory in night school and work seven hours and a half a day in the laboratory workshops. Practical training includes fitting and turning, cryogenics, glass-blowing, and glass-polishing for prisms and lenses.

In the fifth year pupils specialise in mechanical or optical instrument making or glass-blowing.

After this an A-level examination is taken and the 50 per cent who pass move on to a B-level examination in their specialty in their final year at the age of about 22 years.

After another two years in university or industrial employment, a C-level examination is taken. In his refresher leave report, Dr. Seed said other Dutch laboratories had matching courses for electrical and electronics technicians.