Caixin Column 12: Reforming China's Vocational Schools

This article is part of a 12-part Caixin Magazine column series by REAP co-directors Linxiu Zhang and Scott Rozelle. Read the full series here.

The quality of China’s vocational education continuously fails to meet the lowest standards, leaving us with two choices for the future.

The lack of farsightedness in China’s vocational education system means that, despite the large investment poured into it, this system will fail to meet the future demands of its graduates. The wrong goals have been set in China's vocational education, which will inevitably bring serious consequences. These consequences will be felt in the future, however, they are not immediately clear. The problem is that China's vocational education and training system is plagued by fundamental issues, namely that the majority of China's vocational schools are poor (compared to those in Germany), and there is simply no way that China can reach parity.

China’s vocational education and training system is deeply flawed, especially given the large number of vocational schools and the fact that most students enrolling in these schools in the next ten years will be from western and central provinces. Educational experiences are poor, and these problems could soon impact the development process of China.  

Randomized controlled trials conducted by researchers at Stanford University, Peking University, the Hebei Institute of Education Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Shaanxi Normal University’s School of Education, Hebei University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have gathered representative data on vocational schools in China’s northwestern, central, northern, and eastern regions. 
　　
First, vocational students across the country are not learning specialized skills. In this regard, China's vocational schools continually fail to meet even the lowest standards. We randomly selected 10,000 specialized “computer usage” vocational students and 5,000 academic high school students. From this pool, we selected especially poor performing academic high school students within each county, in order to create a more fair comparison with vocational students. For the baseline survey, we had 10,500 students complete a “computer usage” survey. One year later, during the survey assessment phase, we had students complete an  IRT-scaled survey (this survey is meant to assess the absolute knowledge of our “computer usage” students). We found that even vocational students majoring in computer usage still had not mastered new information related to computer usage. In contrast, after one year, academic high school students had mastered computer usage at a much higher level than that demonstrated by vocational students, even though these academic high school students had not studied curriculum related to computer usage.

Furthermore, vocational students had not mastered any type of comprehensive knowledge. In the same study, we had students complete a math, Chinese, and English assessment during the baseline and assessment period. Our results found that not only had students not demonstrated mastery of this content, but that they had actually declined. In other words, after one year, vocational students’ understanding of math, Chinese, and English was actually poorer than it had been a year ago when they entered vocational schools.

Why is the education quality in vocational schools so bad? The answer is simple. China’s vocational education and training system has no standardized or effective management. There is no standardized curriculum, no unified standards for student recruitment, and few of the teachers have experience in the curriculum they are teaching. Teachers at vocational schools are generally those who were relatively ineffective teaching in academic high schools. Although China’s Ministry of Education conducts annual assessments of every stage of the academic education system (elementary school, middle school, and high school), vocational schools are not subject to any checkups or assessments.   

When a school is not teaching its students any kind of specialized knowledge and is instead actually tolerating the student’s decline, students will drop out. Today’s vocational student dropout rate is high. Our study found that dropout rates in China’s central and western vocational schools were as high as 30% to 60%.

If 60% of students are dropping out, what kind of student chooses to stay in vocational school? In 2014, we interviewed several third year vocational students. When asked why they chose to stay in school, most answered “my parents made me stay in school.” In essence, the main purpose of China’s vocational schools is nothing more than to serve as daycare centers for youth.

In conclusion, the current path China has laid out for vocational education and training has failed. In order to improve over the next ten years, China needs to cultivate students, workers, and experts with a strong educational foundation. Teaching students how to weld will not push China into the developed country club. Enclosing students within a daycare center where they study nothing more than dressing smartly and welding has absolutely no use for this country’s development.  

Therefore, China has two choices: either reduce the scale of vocational education and training and thereby encourage academic high schools to recruit students, or reform vocational education by requiring vocational schools to seriously expand the scope of math, Chinese, English and other curriculum instruction. We need to develop human talent in China for 2030 and beyond.  

No matter the solution, China has to establish a structure to ensure that vocational schools meet the country’s standards. Vocational schools will not improve quality through such poor education; vocational schools need supervision; vocational schools need to be subject to evaluations; vocational schools need to cultivate a pool of high-quality dependable talent in order to provide for China’s future economic development.
 

About this series:

REAP co-directors Scott Rozelle and Linxiu Zhang wrote a ten-part series for Caixin Magazine titled, "Inequality 2030: Glimmering Hope in China in a Future Facing Extreme Despair." See below for more columns in this series:

> Column 1: Why We Need to Worry About Inequality

> Column 2: China's Inequality Starts During the First 1,000 Days

> Column 3: Behind Before They Start - The Preschool Years (Part 1)

> Column 4: Behind Before They Start - The Preschool Years (Part 2) 

> Column 5: How to Cure China's Largest Epidemic

> Column 6: A Tale of Two Travesties

>Columns 7 & 8: China's Widest Divide

> Column 9: China's Most Vulnerable Children

> Column 10: Why Drop Out?

> Column 11: The Problem with Vocational Education

> Column 12: Reforming China's Vocational Schools (in Chinese)