Raise status of skilled technicians to boost vocational schools' appeal

AT A RECENT MEETING, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security vowed to better implement its plan of improving vocational education during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), so as to cultivate more skilled workers. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

China has the largest labor force in the world. However, many enterprises complain about a lack of skilled workers, especially senior technicians.

It is a problem that has attracted the attention of the central leadership. In 2014, the State Council, China's Cabinet, called for the structure of higher education to be optimized so that vocational education accounted for more than half of the total. It also set the goal of students at middle vocational schools reaching 23.5 million by 2020.