Only 32.9 percent of workers in China's urban areas have
received vocational education, which shows the country's vocational
education is still far from meeting the need for overall
development, an expert said over the weekend.
Up to 2005, China had set up 14,500 schools for junior
vocational education and 1,091 schools for senior vocational
education, said Wang Mingda, president of the Chinese Association
for Vocational Technical Education.
The number of students in these schools that year reached 21.12
million, Wang told a summit on vocational education on Friday.
There are also 481 schools for adult higher education in the
country, he said.
"However, the thriving vocational education still fails to meet
the demand, especially when China's population of 1.3 billion is
taken into consideration," Wang said.
Among the urban workers who have taken vocational education,
only 4 percent are technicians and 17 percent senior-level skilled
workers, while primary and junior-level workers account for 43
percent and 36 percent respectively.
The situation is less optimistic for migrant workers from rural
areas, Wang said. Less than 15 percent of the 150 million migrant
workers have received vocational education.
The low education level of workers could be partly attributable
to China's irrational industrial structure, low-end and low value
added product dominated product mix, extensive consumption of
resources and frequent accidents in work sites, he said.
(Xinhua News Agency May 20, 2006)
