Secondary vocational school is cutting leeks? Why is it so difficult to learn a technology
Date of issue：2021/05/17
<p style="line-height: 2em;">China's current secondary vocational education is developed from the 1980s, before which the old "technical secondary school" and "technical school" are organized. We are talking about secondary vocational schools. In fact, it was in the early stage of reform and opening up that foreign hotels needed service personnel. A number of vocational schools were set up to train waiters for hotels.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">Those vocational schools are the rudiments of China's current vocational education system, different from the previous "technical secondary schools" and "technical schools", because they are no longer the iron rice bowls, and their social status begins to decline. After the expansion of Higher Vocational Education in 1999, the degree of secondary vocational education is not recognized by the society.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">In 1985, I began to teach in an experimental high school. In my years of observation, China's secondary vocational education has been weak, and the results of running schools have not been recognized by students and society. The main reason behind this is too much administrative intervention. Vocational education is enterprise oriented and market-oriented, and should not be led by the government. When the government decentralizes the administrative power, let more market subjects participate in vocational school running, and realize co governance and co construction, the current situation of weak vocational education can be changed.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">Opening up the right of running vocational education schools</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">In recent years, the state has always attached great importance to the development of vocational education, policy encouragement, a large number of financial funding, but the results are not optimistic. The fundamental reason is that vocational education is originally a market-oriented education, and the trained technical talents go to work in enterprises, but now the leading role of vocational education is still the government, and enterprises do not have much say in vocational education.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">In the 1980s, there was a vocational school specialized in training foreign trade professionals. The training period was half a year, and the school achieved good results. However, the local government had to intervene in running the school, let the school use the teaching materials and add the courses required by the education department. After this toss, the school closed down.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">For private schools, the duration of government intervention is less than 20%. Therefore, private schools will not make long-term planning, but are mostly "fishing" to go on speculation. And some local governments treat private vocational schools like cutting leeks.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">Under the excessive intervention of administrative forces, secondary vocational schools should seek development as long as they maintain a good relationship with the government. In this way, the school will not spend too much attention on the teaching and practical training of students. This results in the current situation that there are few professional practice courses in secondary vocational colleges, and the teaching content is out of line with the actual needs of the society.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">And the teachers of secondary vocational schools also want to drill into the system, which is a stable iron rice bowl for them. Why hasn't there been much progress in the "double teacher system" that we have talked about for so many years? Because the system of secondary vocational education is a system that connects with the government alone, not with enterprises. In the same way, we have mentioned the integration of secondary vocational education and enterprises for so many years, but we have not continued to do so.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">Especially after the higher vocational education is changed into the department management of Vocational Education (vocational education and adult education), because the power of the management department becomes larger, the interference in vocational education becomes more and more, and vocational education is a system, and secondary vocational education is also affected.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">If the survival of secondary vocational schools is determined by the results of running schools, then under the survival of the fittest, the secondary vocational schools that can really let students learn skills and enterprises are satisfied with the teaching results will certainly survive.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">In order to change the current situation of low teaching quality, we should open up the right to run schools, change the situation of public schools fighting alone, and establish corresponding laws and regulations to protect the right of private, enterprises and other non-public institutions to establish vocational education. We should open up the forms of running schools and give them legal status. The combination of long and short, classroom practice, formal and informal, the form should change with the actual needs, and can not use the form of ordinary schools to restrict the behavior of vocational schools.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">The division of Vocational and general education is an integral part of social stratification</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">In the 1990s, China put forward the requirement that "the ratio of vocational education to general education is roughly equal". Because of the policy and financial support for this requirement, for local governments, recruiting a secondary vocational school student can get the corresponding subsidy from the national finance, which also encourages the government to comply with this requirement.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">Students are divided according to the results of the high school entrance examination. Only those who reach the mark can enter the ordinary high school, and the rest of the students are divided into vocational schools. There are many students who do not have enough marks but still want to attend the college entrance examination in ordinary high schools, so they come up with all kinds of methods. Public high schools recruit "school choice students", and some private high schools also lower their scores. What's more, some secondary vocational schools will cooperate with ordinary high schools. Students will be recruited by secondary vocational schools and registered as secondary vocational students. However, they will take classes in ordinary high schools and wait for the college entrance examination to take part in the college entrance examination as social examinees. In this way, secondary vocational schools can get subsidies, and ordinary high schools can also get corresponding benefits.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">Under the rigid policy, this is a spontaneous change sought by the people. However, if the local government's policy is tightened, it will be similar to the case of Huaihua in Hunan Province, where more than 800 students whose scores fail to meet the standards are sent to secondary vocational schools.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">There are many voices in the society asking whether the division of Vocational and general education should be carried out after graduating from high school? It's hard to give an accurate answer now. I think our country should learn from Australia's lifelong career support model. When Australian students are in primary school, they will be exposed to vocational education. The school will record what advantages you have, and then decide whether to enter vocational high school or ordinary high school according to the students' specialty. This is not a rigid competition. And our students have been competing scores since primary school.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">There is a comprehensive high school in the United States, which is a kind of Vocational and general education. In the school, there are both general education and vocational education. This has changed the dual track education in senior high school and promoted the popularization of senior high school education. However, there are some controversies about this educational model in the United States, and the educational achievements are not as good as some private high schools.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">Therefore, to change the current situation of secondary vocational education, we need the reform of the whole education system.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">The existing streaming system of vocational education is actually a part of the hierarchical system of the whole society. Although the government attaches great importance to vocational education, our whole system sets thresholds for vocational school students everywhere. China is an official based system. Parents want their children to be admitted to civil servants and seek an iron rice bowl, but only undergraduates can be admitted to civil servants. Isn't this a stratification of occupations? So the students try every means to get into the ordinary high school. In China's current situation, entering the vocational school, the road of future development is indeed narrowed.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">Shout</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">For some economically underdeveloped areas, vocational schools can give poor children a good choice in their current situation, which is suitable for their personal and family situation. Some students do have difficulties in learning culture courses. Students from poor families may go to work directly after graduating from junior high school.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">In fact, this is a compensatory optimization for them. If we can achieve fair opportunities from the starting point, why not educate these children well from primary school?</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">At present, there is really no way to find a systematic optimal solution to solve the problems in secondary vocational schools. The experience of other countries can be used for reference, but we should pay more attention to our own exploration. The government should decentralize the administrative power so that more social and market subjects can participate in the co governance and co construction. Practice will give the answer.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">The problem of vocational schools is not only in the field of education, but also in the field of social governance. The administrative style of the government in all fields is "one size fits all". It will take a long time for vocational education to achieve our ideal goal.</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">Source: Phoenix Weekly</p><p style="line-height: 2em;">Author Chu Zhaohui (researcher, Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences)</p><p><br/></p>
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