The journeyman's exam as an electronics operator — from production task to journeyman certificate
The rules behind the education and the practical test that determines whether you become a skilled worker
A journeyman's certificate is not just a piece of paper the school issues at its discretion. The training to become an electronics operator is a legally regulated vocational education and the rules for what you must be able to do and how it is assessed are fixed in an ordinance and administered by the trade's own professional committee.
§The rules behind the education
The education to electronics operator is today regulated by announcement no. 312 of 25 March 2024 on the vocational education for electronics operator, issued by the Ministry of Children and Education. The specialization electronics operator is placed at level 3 in the Danish Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning—the same system used to compare the level of Danish educations with each other and with foreign countries.
The specialist part that is the part of the main course directed directly at the electronics operator trade typically lasts 1 year and 6 months and contains 17 school weeks distributed over at least two school periods. The rest of the course happens in practice at your apprenticeship company.
§Who is behind the education
The education is managed by the Development Committee for the Electronics Industry under the Industrial Education Council (IU). A professional committee like this is owned by the parties of the labour market — both employer and employee organisations in the industry — and is tasked with setting the education's content goals and structure and ensuring it is continuously updated to keep pace with developments in electronics production.
§The actual journeyman's test
The journeyman's exam for electronics operator is centred on a practical production task, which is typically carried out in the last school week of the main course's last school period. Here you must show that you can plan and carry out a production task independently — from setup through assembly and soldering to quality control and documentation of what you've done.
- 01Planning and implementation of 35-hour follow-up training
- 02Correct assembly, soldering and any cable production execution
- 03Quality control of the finished result
- 04Documentation of work as it would take place in a real workplace
- 05Safe and correct behaviour throughout the task
§From passing to journeyman's certificate
If you pass the journeyman exam the professional committee issues your journeyman certificate — documentation that you have achieved the competencies the training requires. From here you are a trained electronics operator and can apply for jobs on equal terms with others in the field regardless of which school or company you trained with.
“A journeyman exam assessed by people from the industry itself is also a guarantee that your journeyman certificate means the same thing no matter where in the country you have taken it.”
— Professional view on the journeyman's exam as electronics operator.