Technical education comprises an extensive range of courses and classes that are attended by students who have left day school; it excludes courses provided by the universities and adult education agencies. This body of work includes continuation and hobby classes, school of pharmacy, classes for apprentices and technicians, senior business courses, and a variety of other short and long courses — generally, though not always, part-time day or evening — too numerous to mention individually. Together they form a part of the education service that has been growing very rapidly during the past decade and shows every sign of growing even more rapidly in the next.
The Apprentices Act (1948) provided for the establishment of the office of Commissioner of Apprenticeship to be responsible for apprentices throughout the Dominion and to act as chairman of the 32 New Zealand apprenticeship committees. He is assisted by nine district commissioners who operate regional offices and chair the 223 local committees. Apprenticeship Orders may provide for technical school training and most of them do so. It is for the apprenticeship committee in each case to decide whether that training should take the form of evening classes, day training, block courses, technical correspondence tuition, or, indeed, any other form of training that the committee may select. Normally, though not necessarily, the course will be provided by one or more State schools. Generally, the study course of the town apprentice consists of day release and evening classes, whereas the country boy is provided with technical correspondence tuition and block courses — that is to say, continuous periods of attendance at college during 40 hours a week for one or more weeks. In this way both have the same opportunities but in different forms.
Though the scheme has been operating for over 10 years, it is still changing. There is a definite trend towards block courses in place of half-day a week release, and there is also a tendency towards the replacement of small local evening class centres by correspondence tuition. Typically an apprentice is directed to attend one block course, usually of three weeks' duration, once during each of his first three years of apprenticeship, and any further attendance must be by arrangement between the apprentice and his employer with the concurrence of the Department of Labour. There is a tendency for this to take place to an increasing extent.
The technician is now accepted as a member of the industrial hierarchy, though that word is not always used to describe him. He, or she — for there are many women technicians — is sometimes referred to as a member of the “middle group”, who may be described as people who work with their hands, but their hands are more likely to hold an instrument than a tool. Such a man may have been a tradesman but not necessarily so; and though he will often need a knowledge of manual techniques, he may not necessarily need the ability to practise them.
The Technicians' Certification Act of 1958, which was brought into force on 1 February 1960, puts on a statutory footing the work that had been carried on for five or six years by the Controlling Authority for the New Zealand Certificates in Engineering. The success of these certificates led to the belief that there might be a need in other branches of industry for some similar qualification. The Technicians Certification Authority was formed to investigate these possibilities and to formulate courses, as they were shown to be needed. It took over control of the courses for certificates in engineering and in draughting that were developed by the Controlling Authority; and it has added courses for New Zealand certificates in building, architectural draughting, and quantity surveying; and in the main branches of science – chemistry, physics, biology, and geology. The Authority also offers shorter courses for a technical certificate in automotive engineering and welding; for a certificate of competency in garage management; and for a radio technician's certificate.
The Trades Certification Board is an autonomous body with its own secretariat. The members are representative of both sides of industry, of the Plumbers and Electricians Registration Boards, the Motor Trade Certification Board, the Technical Education Association, the Post-primary Teachers' Association, and the Department of Education, together with the Commissioner of Apprenticeship and a chairman appointed by the Minister of Education. An important feature of the Board's activities is close cooperation with industry both at Board level and at committee level, as well as with the schools.
Apprentices are encouraged to sit for the Board's examinations but they are under no obligation to do so. They do, however, have to attend courses of instruction which are based on the Board's syllabuses. The fifteenth annual report of the Board shows that it now provides for 36 trades and had 13,880 candidates in 1963. Up to 31 March 1964, the Board had issued 16,994 trade certificates and 4,575 advanced trade certificates.
Three types of college may be distinguished in principle — namely, local, regional, and central, and though it may often be found that a particular college exhibits the features of more than one type, its work falls mainly into one of these categories. A local college serves the needs of a locality for technical education and at present takes the form of a post-primary school offering a range of evening and apprentice classes. The regional college serves as a local college but it also draws students for some courses from a wider area which may be anything from, say, Wellington and the Hutt Valley to the whole of the South Island. The size of the region may vary with the course and depends on the number of other colleges providing a particular course. A central college makes a special feature of providing national courses, often in the form of block courses, for groups so small or so specialised that provision for them at only one college in New Zealand can be justified.
Recently a decision was taken to split the Seddon Technical School at Auckland into two schools, one a technical high school and the other a polytechnic. To effect this division, a multi-storey block was erected on the present site. However, before this block could be occupied, the demand for technical classes had grown to such an extent that plans were made to move the day school to another site. A second step was the development of the senior work of the Hutt Valley Technical School at Petone into the Central Institute of Technology, a change made possible by transferring the day school temporarily to prefabricated buildings and subsequently to another site. The Central Institute of Technology provides motor mechanic courses on a regional basis as well as national courses such as those for country electrician apprentices and country refrigeration service apprentices. At the technician level the college provides block courses for students taking various certificate courses by correspondence. In this way they get the practical laboratory work that would normally be obtained by attending live classes. The College also provides sandwich courses at this level.
The Christchurch Technical Institute was formed in 1965 by dividing the Christchurch Technical College into a high school and a technical institute. The Otago Polytechnic is to be formed by the same process in 1966.
Mention must also be made of the New Zealand School of Pharmacy which has been established at Central Institute of Technology. A complete block was remodelled especially for the needs of pharmacy and it now provides accommodation for 150 students spread over the two-year course.
New Zealand is a country characterised by small pockets of population strung out over a long distance. As a consequence the education system must be prepared to deal with a pattern involving small numbers of apprentices in any one place and, indeed, for some trades, in the country as a whole.
One of the agencies that has been developed for this purpose is the Technical Correspondence Institute which now has a full-time staff of 181 teachers. The school caters for a large number of apprentices and in June 1964 they accounted for 7,246 of the total roll of 10,760. To make provision for them, the school provides courses in almost all the apprentice trades and in some of them the tuition, together with block courses, is the only technical training available.
There is a wide variety of other courses, ranging from radio and television to horticulture and farming, and including courses on industrial and business management. Among the more unusual subjects in this range are surveying, textile manufactures of various kinds, aspects of coal-mining, and rural and urban valuation. In several of these subjects, the school offers the only tuition provided by the State system. Another function of the Technical Correspondence Institute is the production of textbooks. Most of the earlier books related to agricultural studies and particularly to New Zealand conditions. More recently, the institute has produced apprentice textbooks, the latest of these being Plumbing in New Zealand and Electricity for Motor Mechanics.
The Council for Technical Education consists of a group of men whose experience and knowledge fit them to consider objectively and dispassionately any question related to technical education that may be submitted to them. The main duties of the council are to advise the Minister of Education on any matter relating to education and training for industry and commerce, and to foster close relations between technical education and industry and commerce. The Council could be paralleled at various levels by national and local committees, both temporary and permanent, by means of which the cooperation between industry and commerce and the education service, that is so desirable, can be made effective and fruitful.
by Bernard Crossley Lee, B.SC.(ENG.), PH.D.(LOND.), D.T.C., M.I.E.E., Superintendent of Technical Education, Department of Education, Wellington.