【Forge ahead in a new journey, make contributions to a new era, and make great changes】
Guangming Daily reporter Jin Haotian
In the past few days, Wang Zhenhong, Secretary of the Party Committee of Zhejiang Jinhua Vocational and Technical College, was very excited. As a veteran of the vocational education front, he witnessed the first major overhaul of the vocational education law: “Vocational education has always been not recognized by society, but now it is clear in legislation for the first time that vocational education is an education type that has the same important status as general education. This is a positive and clear signal that will help reshape the social consensus.”
On April 20, 2022, the 34th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress voted to pass the newly revised Vocational Education Law. This is the first major overhaul of the law since it was enacted in 1996. The new Vocational Education Law will take effect on May 1, 2022.
Economic and social development requires more and more craftsmen from big countries, and cultivating craftsmen from big countries is inseparable from the fertile soil—high-quality vocational education. In August 2019, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out during an inspection at Shandan Peili School in Zhangye City, Gansu Province that the real economy is an important support for my country’s economy. To strengthen the real economy requires a large number of skilled talents, and it is necessary to vigorously promote the spirit of craftsmen and develop vocational education. The prospects are broad and promising.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, especially since the State Council promulgated the “National Vocational Education Reform Implementation Plan” (referred to as “20 Vocational Education Regulations”), my country’s vocational education reform and development has embarked on a fast track of quality improvement, value-added and empowerment. The landscape of education has undergone structural changes. Today, my country has a total of 11,300 vocational colleges and 30.88 million students, building the world’s largest vocational education system and cultivating a large number of technical and technical talents who support economic and social development.
1. From “level” to “type”: breaking the “ceiling” of vocational education
“Vocational education is ‘type’ education, not ‘level’ education, and is as important as general education.” Chen Ziji, director of the Vocational Education and Adult Education Department of the Ministry of Education, has said on many occasions. Now, the clear policy orientation has been guaranteed by legislation. The clear positioning of type education is like a red thread, connecting all aspects of vocational education reform, and many key problems have been solved.
Undergraduate vocational education came into being. At present, there are 32 colleges and universities in vocational undergraduate education in my country, with 129,300 students and 41,400 students in 2021. The “Opinions on Promoting the High-Quality Development of Modern Vocational Education” clearly states that by 2025, the scale of vocational undergraduate education will not be less than 10%.
Taking Shandong as an example, Shandong Province took the lead in establishing the vocational education college entrance examination system of “cultural quality + vocational skills” in 2012. In that year, 2,600 undergraduate enrollment plans were arranged, with more than 30,000 applicants. In 2022, Shandong’s “Vocational Education College Entrance Examination” undergraduate enrollment plan will increase to 18,000, and the number of applicants will reach 209,000.
The “ceiling” of vocational education development has been broken. Hebei Polytechnic University is one of the beneficiaries. “The school is currently working hard on improving hardware indicators, building professional connotation, improving governance capabilities, and in-depth integration of production and education, and making full efforts to achieve the development goal of a high-level vocational and technical university with distinctive characteristics of vocational education.” President Xue Xiaoping Say.
At the same time, the examination and admissions that affect the reform of vocational education are also changing. At present, classified examination enrollment has become the main channel for enrollment. Li Hongqu, Secretary of the Party Committee of Wuhan Vocational and Technical College, is pleased to see that more and more students are willing to take the skills college entrance examination, and the number of such students admitted by the school is also steadily increasing. He said that in 2021, the employment rate of the school’s 1,200 technical college entrance examination graduates will be 98.06%, of which 339 will be admitted, and the admission rate will be 27.34%.
At present, the national higher vocational classification examination has enrolled more than 3 million people, more than 60% of the total number of higher vocational enrollments.
A teacher majoring in aircraft maintenance at the Comprehensive Vocational and Technical Education Center in Fengrun District, Tangshan City, Hebei Province, is teaching students a lesson.Xinhua News Agency
2. “Combination Boxing” Consolidates the Foundation: Talent Cultivation Moves to High Quality
Three years ago, the picture of walking on the podium wearing the national flag flashed back countless times in Wang Shuo’s mind. In early November 2019, the 3rd WorldSkills Russia Eurasian Open was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia. As a student of the Intelligent Manufacturing College of Hebei Industrial Vocational and Technical College, Wang Shuo won the personal silver medal in the CNC turning competition with his excellent professional skills. “As a vocational school student, I am lucky to have such an experience of winning glory for the country,” he said.
This year, Tu Futao, a student of the Huichuan Robotics Innovation Class of Wuxi Vocational and Technical College, received admission intentions from AVIC Leihua Electronic Technology Research Institute, Schneider Electric and other units. Uneasy regarding the status quo, and he likes challenges, he finally chose not to enter a public institution or a Fortune 500 company. Instead, he decided to go to a company in Beijing that specializes in educational robotic equipment and become an embedded engineer.
As early as November 2021, when Tu Futao participated in the 20th National Robot Competition for College Students, he was spotted by the company and threw an olive branch. “As the earliest vocational college in China to offer a major in industrial robotics, our graduates’ employment matching degree continues to rise.” Tu Futao’s employment instructor and control technology college counselor Wang Limei introduced that the industrial robotics major is mainly for industrial robot systems. In the operation and maintenance of integration and related automation systems, the average employment rate in the past three years has been 98.43%, and the average employment counterpart rate has reached 80.27%.
This is the result of the struggles of Wang Shuo and Tu Futao, and it is also a microcosm of the continuous improvement of the quality of my country’s technical and skilled personnel training. In recent years, the follow-up rate of graduates from Jinhua Vocational and Technical College has remained above 97%, more than 10% of graduates have worked in state-owned enterprises, central enterprises and institutions, and nearly 20% of graduates have become the backbone of the medical and educational fronts.
Exploring, advancing, reforming, improving… The Business School of Zhejiang Economic Vocational and Technical College has found a suitable talent training model and school-enterprise cooperation model through continuous exploration. “We use the studio as a carrier to carry out in-depth integration of production and education with dozens of companies, and build a school-enterprise dual studio operation team that integrates ‘production, learning, research, training, and competition’. The mechanism of dual co-management, resource sharing, talent co-education, project co-operation, and achievement sharing has formed a sustainable school-enterprise community with a shared future, which not only improves the quality of talent training, but also achieves fruitful results in production practice, teaching and research, etc. ” said Shao Qingxiang, the principal of the school.
In recent years, vocational education has cultivated a large number of technical and technical talents who support economic and social development, and played an important role in serving national strategies and regional development. Vocational schools across the country offer more than 1,300 majors and more than 120,000 professional points, which basically cover all fields of the national economy and strongly support my country to become the only country in the world with all industrial categories.
In May 2021, students from the secondary vocational school in Longli County, Guizhou Province participated in the coffee preparation skills competition.Xinhua News Agency
3. Improve the institutional system: the level of serving the national economy and people’s livelihood is improving day by day
Whether the quality of vocational education is high or not depends on contribution.
Li Donglou, a professor at Hainan Vocational University of Science and Technology, handed over a dazzling transcript in serving the national economy and people’s livelihood. After working as a ship driver and captain for 10 years, he chose to join Hainan Vocational University of Science and Technology as the dean of the Maritime College. Since then, Li Donglou has actively built a crew education and training system that is in line with international rules, and has cultivated a double-trained teaching team that can “get on the podium, repair ship equipment, and drive ships”. And promote the school to become the only unit in the province that has training qualifications for all types of competency certificates such as sea boats, inland rivers, fishing boats, and yachts.
In recent years, Hainan Vocational College of Science and Technology has trained and assessed more than 300 crew members for various shipping enterprises and institutions in Hainan Province, and trained more than 30,000 crew members at all levels and types. Skill training has long relied on the situation outside the province.
Serving local development also has solid digital support. In 2019, 1.165 million people will be recruited for higher vocational education, 1.574 million will be recruited in 2020, and 1.394 million will be recruited in 2021. Among them, there are retired soldiers, laid-off workers, and migrant workers. The expansion of higher vocational enrollment has also effectively alleviated the severe employment situation while cultivating high-quality technical and skilled talents for the society.
The “Double High Program” is the vanguard of a new round of major reforms in vocational education. The central government guides more than 2 billion yuan of funds every year, driving a large amount of resources and funds to concentrate on vocational education. Among them, the 253 high-level professional groups established by the project are oriented to strategic emerging industries and advanced manufacturing industries, which strongly support the national modern economic system and regional economic and social development.
In Wang Zhenhong’s view, the continuous improvement of the vocational education system has become the key to the fruitful development of vocational education in ten years. During the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan” period, my country has established and improved a vocational education system with Chinese characteristics in the new era, marked by the “dual-track” operation of vocational education and general education, with vertical integration and horizontal integration as the core, and in line with economic and social development and deepening education reform. .
Chen Ziji said that during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, vocational education should focus on three aspects: First, improve the modern vocational education system, further strengthen the characteristics of vocational education types, and accelerate the realization of vertical integration and horizontal integration. The second is to improve the quality of vocational education, improve the quality assurance system of vocational education, and effectively enhance the adaptability of vocational education. The third is to improve the service capacity of vocational education, adapt to the development trend of the industrial economy, further promote the integration of production and education, and accelerate the formation of a diversified school-running pattern for vocational education, so as to provide strong talent and skill support for the comprehensive construction of a modern socialist country.
“In short, it is a sentence, let vocational education ‘have a head, hope, and head’.” Chen Ziji’s words were firm.
“Guangming Daily” (April 27, 2022, version 05)
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责编：孙宗鹤 ]
