The 46th WorldSkills Competition will take place in 2022 in Shanghai. (PHOTO: VCG)

By ZHONG Jianli

China aims to keep the number of students at technical schools above 3.6 million and to train more than two million highly skilled personnel during the 2021-2025 period, according to a five-year plan issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

Titled the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for Education of Skilled Personnel, the plan also sets the goal to provide more than 20 million vocational training sessions to enterprise employees and key employment groups by 2025.

To reach these goals, the plan proposes a series of measures in the following aspects:

● Select about 300 high-quality technical schools and 500 majors to give full play to their exemplary role to build distinctive brands of technical education.

● Encourage all sectors of society to establish schools for technical education. Leading and large enterprises should play their essential role in running these schools. Privately run technical schools will be encouraged and supported.

● Explore the formation of regional, industrial and other types of technical education alliances, and build about 100 of them.

The plan said the country will support and guide technical schools in building a group of special majors that are in line with the national strategic needs and the development of local leading industries. Priority will be given to develop a number of emerging majors that are needed in advanced manufacturing, new energy, new materials, modern agriculture, modern information technology, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence.

It also proposes to speed up the development of much-needed majors, such as nursing, health care and housekeeping, upgrade traditional majors in iron and steel metallurgy, chemical medicine, construction and textile manufacture, and remove or combine majors where graduates have low employment rates. Technical schools are encouraged to develop more majors that are market-oriented and form a system that closely connects industrial and innovation chains.

As of the end of 2020, China had 2,423 technical schools. Apart from developing technical and vocational education at home, China has also provided vocational training programs in other developing countries.

The Luban Workshop is a typical example. Vocational schools from Tianjin have set up Luban Workshops in 18 countries to offer technical skills training to local college students. Eleven such workshops have been set up in 10 African countries, which have helped those countries develop their technical capacities.