Source: People's Daily - People's Daily
In the new journey of comprehensively building a modern socialist country, vocational education has a broad future and great promise. General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed: "Enhance the adaptability of vocational education, accelerate the construction of a modern vocational education system, and cultivate more high-quality technical and skilled personnel, skilled craftsmen, and craftsmen in big countries." At present, with the continuous advancement of supply-side structural reform, the demand for high-quality technical and skilled personnel, skilled craftsmen and craftsmen in all walks of life is increasing day by day. Enhancing the adaptability of vocational education and accelerating the construction of a modern vocational education system is an important way to cultivate high-quality technical and skilled talents, skilled craftsmen, and craftsmen in big countries, promote employment and entrepreneurship innovation, and promote the level of Manufacturing and Services in China, and is also an inevitable requirement for building an education power. Through the development of vocational education, we should provide strong talent and skill support for the comprehensive construction of a modern socialist country and the realization of the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
Improve the quality of vocational education development. In 2019, the National Vocational Education Reform Implementation Plan issued by the State Council proposed: "Vocational education and general education are two different types of education and have the same important status. "Compared with general education, vocational education has its own characteristics in terms of training goals and education methods, and improving the quality of vocational education development needs to follow the training rules of technical skills talents, skilled craftsmen, and craftsmen in big countries, take the post demand as the guide, focus on the cultivation of practical ability, promote the docking of the teaching process and the production process, strictly control the two thresholds of teaching standards and graduate quality standards, and strive to meet the differentiated needs of different regions and different formats for technical skills talents, skilled craftsmen, and craftsmen in big countries." It is necessary to speed up the construction of vocational and technical normal colleges and universities, optimize the structure and layout of colleges and universities, build a vocational education school system parallel to the general education school system, enrich the types of vocational education colleges and universities, and continuously develop the national key vocational colleges and universities that help the industrial layout, local demonstration vocational colleges that serve the local economy, and private vocational colleges that strive to promote employment. Attach importance to the leading role of teacher training, clarify the qualification identification and selection standards for teachers, take measures such as promoting the two-way flow of high-skilled talents in enterprises and teachers in vocational colleges and universities, and create a "double-teacher" teacher team with excellent professional quality; improve the pre-service, induction and post-service training system for vocational education teachers, and continuously improve the professional level of teachers in vocational colleges and universities.
Promote school-enterprise cooperation and the integration of industry and education. School-enterprise cooperation and the integration of industry and education can not only enhance the adaptability of vocational education, but also enhance the vitality of vocational education. Promote school-enterprise cooperation and the integration of industry and education, require enterprises to deeply participate in vocational education planning, promote the construction of vocational education professional clusters that meet the development needs of industrial clusters, and transform industrial development goals into talent training goals. It is necessary to guide the construction of a number of high-level and professional resource-sharing vocational education training bases, give play to the radiation and leading role of the demonstration industry-education integration training base, explore and innovate the operation mode of the training base, and strive to maximize the benefits of vocational education resources. Encourage enterprises to deeply participate in vocational education and school running, and give full play to the advantages of enterprises in technology application, production practice, equipment and facilities, management and operation. Improve the certification system for industry-education integration enterprises, increase policy guidance, and continuously mobilize the enthusiasm of enterprises to participate in vocational education reform and innovation through tax credits, financial preferences, credit publicity, etc., and give full play to the important role of enterprises in running vocational education. Create a social environment in which enterprises assume the responsibility of vocational education, build an effective mechanism for enterprises to fulfill their vocational education obligations, and strive to promote the in-depth integration and development of enterprises and vocational colleges.
Reform and improve the vocational education system. To enhance the adaptability of vocational education and accelerate the construction of a modern vocational education system, it is necessary to improve the setting standards of vocational colleges and universities in accordance with the requirements of adapting professional settings to industrial needs, docking teaching content and occupational standards, and coordinating teaching processes and production processes, continue to promote the standardization of curriculum standards, teaching standards, internship standards and practical training conditions, and continuously improve the teaching practice and teaching management capabilities of vocational colleges and universities. With the level of technical skills, professional ethics, employment quality and integration of industry and education, and the level of school-enterprise cooperation as the core, a vocational education quality evaluation and supervision evaluation system is constructed. The reform of the vocational education certificate system should be based on the cultivation of composite technical skills talents and lifelong education, actively learn from the experience of international vocational education and training, continuously improve the development, assessment and certification of academic certificates and vocational skill level certificates, and vigorously promote the pilot work of the 1 X certificate system of "academic certificates and vocational skill level certificates" to form a complete academic framework and vocational skills qualification framework. Explore the establishment of individual learning accounts for vocational education and the national "credit bank", orderly carry out the credit transformation of academic certificates and vocational skill level certificates, further enhance the accuracy, accumulation depth and flexibility of conversion of vocational education learning achievements, broaden the channel for the sustainable growth of vocational and technical skills talents, and encourage vocational college students to obtain higher grades and more categories of vocational skill level certificates while obtaining academic certificates, combined with their majors and their own career planning.
Enhance the recognition of vocational education. According to data from the Ministry of Education, in 2019, the enrollment of higher vocational colleges and universities nationwide was expanded by 1.16 million, and at the same time, the enrollment of primary vocational education and secondary vocational education also showed a steady upward trend. To further enhance the social recognition of vocational education, it is necessary to go towards the problem, find the focus point, make real efforts, and see practical results. First of all, actively carry out the pilot of vocational education at the undergraduate level, promote the transformation of qualified ordinary undergraduate colleges and universities to application-oriented, encourage ordinary colleges and universities with conditions to open applied technology majors or courses, and deepen the reform of the training model for professional degree master's degree students. Secondly, anchor the reference point for the recognition of vocational education and general education learning results, promote the mutual recognition of vocational education and general education academic qualifications and the flow of talents, break down the barriers between non-academic education and academic education, vocational education and general education, provide more selectivity and possibilities for the future development of vocational education graduates, and continuously enhance the attractiveness of vocational education. Third, link the salary and treatment with the level of technical skills, gradually improve the income level of technical and skilled personnel, especially front-line skilled workers, encourage local governments to include senior technical talents in the local talent introduction plan, so that they can enjoy the same treatment as higher education talents in terms of settlement, housing, professional title evaluation, rank promotion, children's education, social security, etc., and further improve the social return rate and social recognition of vocational education.
(Author Affilications:School of Government and Management, Beijing Normal University)
People's Daily (09/12/2021)