Changjiang Daily:

Since the establishment of the MVA, what has been done to promote the education and training of veterans and boost the employment of veterans who involved in enrollment expansion programs of vocational colleges? Thank you. 

Ma Feixiong:

Thank you for your question. Mr. Yu will answer your question. 

Yu Jingsen:

Thank you for your concern. As we know, service members are devoted to protecting our country while most young people study at school or prepare to enter higher school. Therefore, they need to improve their educational background and vocational skills after they retire from military service. I will answer the question from the following five aspects:

First, we have strengthened the top-level design. We worked with education, finance, and social security departments to roll out more than 10 policy documents related to education (receiving higher education) and training, reconstructing the whole education and training system.

Second, we organize adaptive training. Veterans face a significant change after they retire from military service. How to adapt themselves to the social situation as quickly as possible is a challenge. We have promoted adaptive training across the country since 2019, specifying the training's content, timetables, and forms. More than 520,000 veterans have improved their social adaptability through training. 

Third, we focus on improving their educational background. We worked with the Ministry of Education to boost enrollment expansion of self-employed veterans for higher vocational colleges. More than 1 million ex-service members who graduated from high school studied at a full-time junior college without being asked to take literacy exams. Moreover, 180,000 went back to school, and 20,000 became graduate students. We conducted tuition reduction or exemption for undergraduates, junior college students and postgraduates. National grant programs for undergraduates and junior college students have covered all full-time students who retired from military service. 

Fourth, we improve their vocational skills. We have strengthened the management of training institutions, establishing a management system featuring provincial unified planning and municipal leadership. We require counties to be held responsible for work assigned by the provincial and municipal governments, releasing name lists of training institutions, assessing performance at regular intervals, and expanding training programs to encourage ex-service members to participate in programs to improve their vocational skills and satisfy their growing diversified training demand with high quality. Our training programs have covered a total of 820,000 people. 

Enrollment expansion of higher vocational colleges and employment, which the reporter mentioned, is also a hot issue of the year. The first batch of ex-service members who participated in enrollment expansion programs of vocational colleges will graduate this year, and the number of graduates is expected to reach 300,000. To ensure their employment, we worked with the Ministry of Education to coordinate deployment and arrangements and promote full and stable employment. The preliminary statistics showed that the initial employment rate for graduates from vocational colleges stood at over 80 percent.

That's all for my answer, thank you.