People’s Daily: China Built the Largest Vocational Education System

The journalist has known from Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China that currently, China has built the largest vocational education system worldwide, with 11200 vocational colleges and more than 29.15 million school students. ‘Secondary vocational schools and higher vocational colleges each year cultivate around 10 million talents with high-quality vocational skills and techniques. Enrollment expansion of higher vocational colleges reaches 4.133 million people within three years, and more than 10 thousand vocational schools conduct training of wide varieties each year for about 10 million students.’ Director of Vocational and Adult Education Department of Ministry of Education introduced that vocational education is a vital part of national education system and human resources development. In recent years, its adaptation has been strengthened, and modern vocational education system has been fostered in a faster speed, providing high-quality human resources for advancing economic and social development as well as national competitiveness.   

——Vocational education has been in sync with the pulse of industrial development. Statistics show that in the past 10 years, the program catalog of vocation education has been adapted twice, with more than 70% of the contents updated. At present, more than 1300 academic programs are developed in more than 120 thousand vocational colleges, covering almost all fields of national economy and thus bolstering China to be the only country with full industrial categories. In areas of modern manufacturing, strategic emerging industries and modern services industry, etc., more than 70% of front-line workers graduate from vocational schools and colleges. 

——Cooperation between colleges and enterprises has been deepened. More than 1500 vocational education groups (leagues) have been formed around the state, covering more than 45000 member institutions including enterprises, colleges, industries and R&D institutes, fostering a unique college-running scheme featuring shared resources, joint responsibilities and cooperative development. With the incentive policy of ‘land+finance+tax’, vocational schools with enterprises have developed 24900 practical training centers, with an annual increase of 8.6%. The pilot program of modern apprenticeship has covered more than 1000 vocational schools with appointed programs.

——Colleges build ‘flyover’ for student cultivation. Information shows that more than 4500 vocational colleges support middle and primary schools in educational labour practices and vocation-enlightening education, which radiate about 110,000 middle and primary schools and more than 15 million people. This can guide teenagers in building the ideal of dedicating themselves to serving the country with excellent skills. The ‘vocational college entrance examination’ system with ‘cultural knowledge + vocational skills’ as contents has been improved to be the main channel for students of vocational schools and normal senior-highs to pursue higher vocational education.

——Abundant resources will be provided to support lifelong learning for all. Central budget has been supporting the development of a national professional teaching library for vocational education for 10 consecutive years. Based on these efforts, the ‘National Smart Platform of Vocational Education’ was officially established this March, covering 19 professional categories, 396 higher vocational programs, and pooling more than 660 professional education libraries, more than 1000 online quality courses and more than 2000 open video courses, with more than 420 videos, pictures, documents and other resources, providing sufficient digital resources for nation-wide lifelong learning.

(Source: People’s Daily)