Xiong Bingqi: Eliminate discrimination and resolve the anxiety of "general job diversion"

Source: Global Times

At present, one of the factors that plague the fertility willingness of the population of childbearing age in China is the issue of children's education and further education. Recently, news such as "1:1 general job diversion" and "50% of children can't go to high school but can only go to vocational school" have circulated on the Internet, which has worried many parents. Some opinions point out that the diversion of general jobs will not only intensify the internal volume of urban education and aggravate the imbalance of educational resources, but also cause a waste of talents, cut off the hopes of families and children, and the message passed to couples of childbearing age is to be cautious about having children.

From a worldwide perspective, there are two models of high school education: one is the general vocational separation (diversion) model, which is typical of Germany, and after junior high school, more than 60% of German students choose to enter vocational colleges. The other is the general vocational integration model, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries of high school basically use this model, high school both academic courses, but also open technical courses, by the students to choose independently, after graduating from high school, and then by the students choose to enter ordinary colleges or vocational colleges.

Our country has adopted the model of general separation of posts. However, unlike German students who are happy to choose vocational colleges and parents also respect the choice of students, most parents in China do not accept their children to read secondary vocational schools, and in recent years, the demand for reducing or even canceling the middle vocational school is increasing. In fact, the proportion of secondary vocational enrollment in China in high school enrollment has dropped from 50.94% in 2010 to 41.7% in 2019, but parents are still not satisfied. At this year's two sessions, some deputies suggested increasing the admission rate of Pugao to 85%, which was praised and supported by many netizens.

From the perspective of cultivating high-quality skilled personnel, the general job diversion method is reasonable. Combined with the reality of China's social and economic development, some experts pointed out that 70% of students in China should receive vocational education (including secondary vocational education and higher vocational education), however, vocational education is not welcomed in China. There are three reasons, first, the development of vocational education in China, for a long period of time, is not vocational education as an equal type of education with general education, but as an education below the level of general education, many places on vocational education to self-dwarf, such as the use of the general high rate of junior high schools to evaluate the school, the undergraduate rate to evaluate the high school, that is, vocational education as a low-level education. If vocational education is not recognized even by local government departments, how can students and parents be required to recognize it?

Second, vocational colleges lack the autonomy to run schools and cannot flexibly adjust their majors and courses according to changes in social needs. Vocational colleges should be employment-oriented, but many vocational colleges refer to ordinary school teaching, in the social environment of advocating academic qualifications, these vocational colleges do not adhere to the positioning of vocational education, there is a tendency to run schools oriented by academic qualifications.

Third, when recruiting talents, employers continue to raise the threshold of academic qualifications, artificially creating a theory of high consumption of academic qualifications and a famous school. Correspondingly, society is also increasingly advocating academic qualifications, despising and even discriminating against skilled talents. Some parents are worried that their children will become skilled talents in middle jobs, have no future, be discriminated against, and become harvested "leeks".

Obviously, if these problems are not solved, it is to adopt the high school education method of general vocational integration, not to divert the flow at the time of junior high school graduation, and to divert the flow after high school graduation, the anxiety of parents is still difficult to eliminate, and the training of skilled talents will have serious problems. At the high school level, students are reluctant to learn skills, after graduating from high school, they also want to enter ordinary colleges and universities, but China's social and economic development is very much in need of a large number of skilled talents. This can lead to a serious disconnect between the structure and quality of education and the needs of society.

In view of the problems existing in the development of vocational education, China has proposed to make vocational education a type of education and form a social atmosphere that dilutes academic qualifications and advocates skills. The key lies in the fact that there must be practical actions, such as promoting the reversal of the utilitarian and performance concept of local education oriented to the development of education, cleaning up the education management and evaluation system that discriminates against vocational education, and curbing the phenomenon of high academic qualifications when talents are introduced in various places. (The writer is president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute)