From Department of International Cooperation and Exchange, Ministry of Education

1. The Rapid Expansion of the Scale of Vocational education

During the 21 years between 1980 and 2001the proportion of regular senior high school students among all the students in senior secondary education has decreased from 81% to 54.7%, while the proportion of secondary vocational school students has increased from 19% to 45.3%. The enrollment of sceondary vocational schools covers41.58% of the total while the number of students to covers 45.3% of the whole. From1980 to 2001, secondary vocational education institutions produced 50 million graduates, fostering millions of secondary - level and primary - level technical workers, managers, skill workers and other labors with good vocational and technical education.

2. The Big Stride Made in the Construction of Vocational Education Teachers

Teachers for vocational education are mostly graduates from regular higher education institutions. Since 1989, over 160 HEIs have established departments, specialities or classes devoted to the training of vocational education teachers with the total enrollment of 21,000 students. At the same time, the government began the establishment of teacher training bases for vocational education. Nowadays, there are 52 training bases set by vocational technical colleges and over 200 bases set by local governments. As a result, a training bases network has basically taken shape, meeting the needs of teacher training for vocational education of various forms and at various levels.

3. The Increase of the Quality and Level of Vocational Education

During the past over 50 years, especially the 20 years after reform and opening to the outside world, much attention has been paid to the quality and level of vocation education as well as the schooling efficiency. Meanwhile its scale has been extraordinary expanded. By the end of 2001, more than 3000 key and pilot vocational schools have been established, promoting the overall development of vocational education.

4. The Primary Fruits of the Teaching Reform of Vocational Education

Learning the foreign modern vocational education thought and teaching patterns to improve the level of teaching is an important component of the reform of vocational education. For example, the “dual - track system” of Germany, the educational and training pattern based on the ability in Australia and Canada, the Employment Education Structure (MES) advocated by the World Labor Organization, the “Skill Courses for Starting Small Enterprises”initiated by the UNESCO and the “Business and Trade Simulated Company” springing up widely all over the world, all became the models for the reform of Chinese vocational education and promoted the improvement of vocational education in China.

5. Rapid Development of Vocational Education in Rural Areas

Since the 1980’s, significant progress has been made in vocational education in rural areas of China with its quantity greatly enlarged and quality greatly improved. Rural vocation education is mainly conducted by the specialized secondary schools on agriculture and forestry, rural vocational high schools and the cultural and technical schools for peasants. Since 1984, these schools have produced over 9 million secondary vocational school graduates and nearly 2 million junior vocational school graduates for the whole society. Most of these graduates have taken the lead in “Making a Fortune by Science and Technology" in the countryside, contributing immensely to the economic development in rural areas. The main tasks of the reform of rural vocational education are the implementation of the “Blaze Programme", - a programme carried out in the countryside which emphasizes the connection between economic development and reform of education and teaching, the integration of agriculture, science, technology and education and the “Overall Planning of Three Educations”(basic education, vocational education and adult education).

6. More and More Important Role Played by Research on Vocational Education

With the development of vocational education, research on vocational education has been enhanced and a number of vocational education research institutions have been established, organizing the full - time and part - time research teams composed jointly by administrative departments responsible for vocational education, research institutions, vocation schools and academic organizations, carrying out various forms of vocational education research at different levels. Since the 1980's, about 90 research topics have been included in the state education research plans with some of the research fruits playing an important role of reference for the government to make vocational education policies.