中文       Deutsch       Français       日本語
Search      Subscribe
Home    Nation    World    Business    Opinion    Lifestyle    China Focus    ChinAfrica    Multimedia    Columnists    Documents    Special Reports
Nation
Every Trade Has a Master
Secondary vocational schools produce skillful workers
By Wang Hairong  ·  2019-05-30  ·   Source: Web Exclusive

  

Cheng Xiaochun (left), a senior teacher in Jinsong Vocational High School, meets her former student Tian Guichang during the Asian Cuisine Festival on May 18 (COURTESY PHOTO) 

Assorted delicacies were on display at Hua’s Restaurant counter at the Asian Cuisine Festival held in Beijing recently, yet huge flour-made balloons were what first caught the eye of passersby.  

“They’re not just for decoration. They can also be baked and eaten,” Tian Guichang, the restaurant employee who made the balloons, explained to amazed visitors.  

Tian told Beijing Review that he learned his culinary skills at Beijing Jinsong Vocational High School, which brought him from a poverty-stricken village in Guizhou Province to Beijing and then to Hua’s Restaurant, a leading eatery brand featuring Beijing-style dishes such as Peking duck.  

With many participating chefs who graduated from vocational high schools, the festival inadvertently provided a glimpse into the importance of secondary vocational education. 

Life-changing education 

Before coming to Beijing six years ago, Tian lived with his parents and younger brother and sister in a village in Shiqian County of Tongren City in Guizhou Province. The family mainly subsisted on crop farming. 

After finishing junior middle school, he was admitted into a good local high school, but the tuition was prohibitively high for the family struggling under the poverty line.  

It was then that he learned about a poverty-alleviation vocational educational program sponsored by a Hong Kong-based company. Through the program, qualified students can study at Jinsong high school for three years, with educational and living expenses covered by the sponsoring company. Tian applied, passed the entrance exam and was admitted, saving his family money and getting an opportunity to see a bigger world.  

In China, regular high schools are oriented toward preparing students for university degree programs, whereas vocational high schools mainly train students for the job market.  

Tian entered the vocational school in 2013 and studied until 2016, learning to cook food of various flavors and forms. After graduation, he found a job, and although he does not make a lot of money to send home to his parents, he said at least he is able to support himself by working as a pastry chef. 

At the festival, Tian bumped into his teacher Cheng Xiaochun, who is a senior instructor at Jinsong, teaching Chinese cuisines.  

“I have met several of my former students at the cuisine festival,” Cheng told Beijing Review, adding that she is happy to see them confidently represent their respective employers and demonstrate their skills. 

Yang Le, another of Cheng’s former students, also participated in the festival. After graduating from the school 10 years ago, he is now a production skill manager at Tianfuhao Food Company, a time-honored brand famous for its delicatessen products. Yang told his teacher that he had developed a few new products recently and brought many delicious food items to the festival.  

Jinsong also set up its own booth, showcasing students’ products, including a huge watermelon carved into a big flower and exquisite statues etched from various food products. Ma Xueyan, a second-year student showed visitors how to carve these pieces of art.  

Shrinking enrollment 

Founded in 1983, Jinsong, the first vocational high school in the capital, has a current total enrollment of about 3,000 students. It also provides training to more than 4,000 non-students every year. 

The school is one of 1,000 national-level demonstrative vocational high schools in China. As of 2017, there were 10,700 secondary vocational schools across the country, enrolling a total of 15.93 million students, or 40 percent of all high school students, according to the Annual Report on the Quality of Secondary Vocational Education in China (2018) released by the Central Institute of Vocational and Technical Education in February.  

Large-scale vocational training is an important measure to enhance the employability and entrepreneurship of workers, alleviate structural employment problems and promote employment expansion, said Premier Li Keqiang on May 23 during a teleconference. It is also important for bolstering high-quality economic development, he said.  

The government offers financial assistance to many secondary vocational students. Full-time secondary vocational students from rural areas and poverty-stricken urban families, as well as those majoring in agricultural-related subjects, can get tuition waivers for state-run schools or an equivalent amount of subsidy for private schools. 

In this May, the Ministry of Education announced that secondary vocational students are also eligible to national scholarships. 

Secondary vocational schools have played an irreplaceable role in improving the quality of the labor force, providing technical services to society, disseminating traditional culture, promoting coordinated regional development and alleviating poverty, stated the institute’s report.  

It showed that in 2017, secondary vocational schools produced 4.06 million graduates, 96.38 percent of whom found employment the same year. They also supplied 170,000 graduates for the modern agriculture industry, 510,000 for the modern manufacturing industry and 2.46 million for the modern service industry, the report said. In addition, the schools delivered on-the-job training for employees of enterprises and other organizations.  

Moreover, sampling tests of secondary vocational students in 13 provinces and municipalities conducted in 2017 indicated that more than 90 percent of them met academic standards.  

While affirming the important role of secondary vocational education, the report also noted some challenges, including shrinking enrollment, regional development disparity, social prejudice and some schools’ lack of motivation or ability to innovate teaching methods and curricula.   

Vocational school students are often looked down upon as having low academic performance. Many parents are reluctant to send their children to secondary vocational schools for fear of depriving them of an opportunity to get university education. 

As university enrollment in China has increased significantly, more students are choosing to go to regular high schools and then to university. It has been reported that secondary vocational schools in some areas are having difficulty attracting enough students, with some schools even shutting down. 

Ministry of Education’s statistics indicated that from 2010 to 2017, the number of secondary vocational schools dropped from 13,872 to 10,700, or more than one fifth. During the same period, the annual number of students admitted into these schools dwindled from 8.7 million, or 50.94 percent of all students admitted into high schools, to 5.82 million, or 42.1 percent. 

 

Students of the e-commerce program in Jinsong Vocational High School take part in the Third Allpass Cup National Mobile Business Skill Competition held in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, on November 25, 2018 (COURTESY PHOTO) 

Meeting social needs 

Enhancing vocational education is one of the goals set by China’s Education Modernization 2035, a blueprint for the development of education released in February. 

The document stated that the coordinated development of secondary vocational education and general high school education should be promoted, the structure of vocational education should be optimized and the connection between vocational education and industrial development should be strengthened.  

It also said that vocational schools should be guided to adjust their discipline and specialty structure in a timely manner. 

Jinsong is one of those schools that has adjusted its structure to meet changing social demand and keep abreast with industrial development.  

Currently, the school offers a variety of majors, including Chinese and Western culinary arts, hotel management, cosmetology, hairdressing, image design, digital image technology, fitness instruction, musical instrument repair, elderly services and senior care management, housekeeping services and management, e-commerce, and business English. There is strong demand for skillful workers in these fields.  

In response to a surging e-commerce industry, the education authority of Chaoyang District in Beijing decided to set up an e-commerce program in Jinsong, said Li Bailing, the director of the program. 

“Currently, two classes with a total of more than 60 students specialize in general e-commerce while one class of about 30 students majors in cross-border e-commerce,” she told Beijing Review.  

Zheng Jiawei, a second-year student said he chose to major in e-commerce because he wants to open an online store for his parents, who currently run a brick-and-mortar store in Tianjin.  

Under the program, students take courses such as web page design, Internet marketing, photography, graphic design and short video production in addition to courses in math and the Chinese and English languages, Li said.    

The teaching combines theory with practice, with some courses taught by employees of Internet companies such as Alibaba Group and JD Group  and companies selling products on platforms like AliExpress, eBay and Amazon.   

“The students spend two years and a half studying on campus, and then six months completing an internship,” Li said. 

As part of the curriculum, students manage online stores for partner companies. Wang Ying, a second-year student majoring in cross-border e-commerce, is selling fishhooks and rock climbing rope buckles to overseas markets via the Internet along with her classmates. Consumers buying these products are mainly located in the U.S., Australia and Japan, she said.  

They uploaded first-rate photos of their products and prepared product descriptions in various languages. Wang keeps an exhaustive list of delivery costs to many international destinations. She said it took her quite some time to gather the data and compile her list. She also monitors sales data to analyze the market.  

While Wang Ying is considering opening an online store in the future, her classmate Wang Jianshe has already opened his own Taobao store, which has been up and running for three months.   

“The first product I sold was hamster food,” he said. A poster on the web page shows a cute hamster beside a plateful of assorted grains, saying, “These are my favorite.” Meanwhile, Wang Jianshe said he recently added a dog food brand to his store. 

With three other teammates, Wang Jianshe won second place during an e-commerce competition among Beijing secondary vocational students this month. He is preparing for the National Vocational Students Skill Competition to be held in June. 

“Our program is among the top in Beijing,” Li said. “E-commerce is developing very fast, so we need to constantly keep ourselves up to date.”  

Copyedited by Rebeca Toledo  

Comments to wanghairong@bjreview.com 

About Us    |    Contact Us    |    Advertise with Us    |    Subscribe
Partners: China.org.cn   |   China Today   |   China Pictorial   |   People's Daily Online   |   Women of China   |   Xinhua News Agency   |   China Daily
CGTN   |   China Tibet Online   |   China Radio International   |   Beijing Today   |   gb times   |   China Job.com   |   Eastday   |   CCN
Copyright Beijing Review All rights reserved 京ICP备08005356号 京公网安备110102005860号
Print
Chinese Dictionary: