NN38, February 2007
Technical and Vocational Skills Development
INVESTING IN HIGH-LEVEL SKILLS TRAINING FOR DEVELOPMENT
By Wang Wenjin, Central Institute of Vocational and Technical Education, Beijing
KeywordsTVET, High-level skills training, China
Summary
In recent years, the Chinese government has emphasized high-level skills training, paying much more attention to TVET than in the past. This article briefly examines some of the current government TVET policies.
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In recent years, the Chinese government has emphasized high-level skills training. The shortage of high-level skilled hands has become a ?bottle-neck? to economic development.
In 2004, 32% of all those employed were skilled workers: of these only 4% were technicians and senior technicians, 17% high-skilled manpower, 36% middle-level skilled manpower, with the remaining 43% low-skilled workers. In China while 150 million rural workers migrated to the cities in 2005, few of them have been trained.
Some enterprises cannot hire enough high-level skills even with high pay. It is urgent to train high-level skills in China.
Nowadays China?s government pays a great deal of attention to TVET. On November 15th, 2006, the Premier of the State Council, Wen Jiabao, invited some TVET experts to have an informal discussion at Zhong-Nan-Hai, the government head-quarters. During 2006-2010, the central government will make an increase of 14 billion RMB [circa £1billion sterling] input into TVET and the provincial governments will increase this by another 16 billion RMB.
The central government also issued the document entitled The Decision on Further Strengthening the Training for High-level skills to regulate the institutions for high-level skills training. In that document, the following points were emphasized:
* Innovation training, based on key national projects of high-level technology and equipment input;
* New Technology and skills training based on industries? technical reform and innovation;
* Strengthening the cooperation between TVET schools and enterprises;
* Training in high-level skills by inputting foreign advanced training resources in China, or by training abroad;
* Setting up a high-level skills evaluation system which is orientated to assessing capacity and performance.
* Increasing the number of technicians;
* Strengthening the service of skilled hands; and,
* Collecting training funds from multiple sources, and encouraging different bodies to become involved in trainer?s training, curriculum development, and textbook development.
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