Vocational education to be further developed, report says

The country will take strong moves to develop modern vocational education to help ease current employment pressure and address the shortage of highly-skilled personnel, according to the newly delivered Government Work Report on Tuesday morning.

The report said that a vocational skills training initiative will be implemented with 100 billion yuan ($14.9 billion) from the surplus in unemployment insurance funds allocated to provide training for the 15 million targeted attendees, helping jobseekers to upgrade skills or switch jobs or industries.

Reform will be enhanced and improve the ways that vocational colleges conduct examinations and enrollments to encourage more high school students, demobilized military personnel, laid-off workers and rural migrant workers to apply, achieving a large-scale expansion of 1 million in student enrollment.

According to the report, the central government will greatly increase fiscal support for vocational colleges with a State scholarship for secondary vocational education projected to be established. Also, coverage of scholarships and grants, as well as financial assistance, will be expanded for vocational college students.

The government will speed up the work to align vocational technical grade certificates with academic credentials and reform the operating mechanism of vocational colleges to raise the quality of vocational education.

The government will also support enterprises and private actors in providing vocational education, the report said.