In this Dec 10, 2020 photo, a contestant cuts wood during the first vocational skills competition in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong province. (LU HANXIN / XINHUA)
HONG KONG – In recent months, vocational education has received strong attention against the backdrop of a slew of policy initiatives at both national and local levels. In December 2020, the Ministry of Education and Guangdong Provincial Government jointly designated Shenzhen to pilot national reform efforts for vocational education. The move aimed to create world-class vocational institutes by 2025 and bring about innovations in training methods and enterprise-partnered delivery models that would serve the needs of future economic development in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The policy measures explicitly call for greater synergies with Hong Kong and Macao on mutual recognition of qualifications and skills, credit transfer and movement of students, including Hong Kong subdegree qualification holders studying for a vocational degree in Shenzhen.
To move the two places closer together for productive exchanges, some understanding of the similarities and differences in their respective vocational education systems is worthwhile exploring. Shenzhen has three higher vocational institutes that train around 50,000 students. Hong Kong has a more diversified provider landscape made up of 29 institutions with some 57,000 students studying for subdegrees. However, Hong Kong’s bifurcated offering of associate degrees and higher diplomas entails that only the latter can be considered as vocational education by curriculum design. This places the scale of postsecondary vocational education in Hong Kong at roughly 60 percent of that in Shenzhen.
The salient difference lies with what is being emphasized and actually taken up by students in the two places. A significant sum to the tune of 10 billion yuan ($1.56 billion) that Shenzhen plows into its vocational system within two years (2021-2022) will go into creating a first-class vocational training for microchips and new generation information and communication technology. This investment is targeted at supporting strategic industries of artificial intelligence, 5G, internet of things and intelligent equipment involved in smart manufacturing. In contrast, Hong Kong’s market-led provision has only a 9 percent share of students doing computer science, IT, engineering and technology in self-financing subdegree programs. The top three areas of training absorbing half of the students are business and management, social science and healthcare. The difference is stark, and it reflects the underlying economic structures of the two cities.
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What this implies is that focusing closer collaboration on technical subjects would be hard to realize given the disparate interest of learners especially from Hong Kong. But other areas of training, particularly the soft vocational areas centered on human and care services, can pick up from where hard vocational subjects such as engineering failed to elicit strong cross-border study interests previously. The vocational subjects popular with students in Hong Kong, such as business, hospitality, design and cultural management, have a greater level of international interfacing than their Chinese mainland equivalents and would be attractive to mainland students seeking to broaden their international horizons through doing part of their studies in Hong Kong.
By drawing on the spirit of complementarity and transposing it into educational planning, positive results can be derived to move vocational education collaboration in the Bay Area one significant step ahead
Likewise, a collaboration between vocational teachers of the two places in these areas of training could spawn many meaningful exchanges such as co-designing of curricula, developing Massive Open Online Courses, teaching virtual classes, and authoring digital teaching resources together. It can be seen from these examples that fertile ground exists for the two places to pursue joint projects and co-design study programs to effectively implement credit transfer and mutual recognition of qualifications as envisaged by the policy measures to advance Greater Bay Area vocational education collaboration.
For educational exchange to be bidirectional, interest to study in mainland vocational programs can be facilitated by career opportunities available to Hong Kong students. Despite the strong focus on smart manufacturing as the major impetus for vocational education modernization, the State Council's guidelines released last month for improving the quality of skill-focused education call for expedited development of service professions that lack manpower, including elderly care, nursing, preschool and household services.
Preschool education holds great potential as there is room for establishing Hong Kong-styled kindergartens in Shenzhen and other Bay Area cities riding on their younger population structures and growth of kindergarten school clientele. In fact, the Outline Development Plan for Guangdong-HK-Macao GBA has broached the topic of allowing Hong Kong qualified educators to take the requisite exams to be able to teach in Guangdong. Getting a vocational qualification in preschool education would work to the benefit of Hong Kong students who are contemplating whether to develop their careers in the Bay Area.
Frameworks and guidelines aside, real action must be taken to make the idea work. Just last week, the Hong Kong Metropolitan University and Shenzhen Institute of Information Technology entered into a memorandum of agreement to work together in developing joint study programs leading to awards of the two institutions. What is unique in the new model is to come up with programs of study that truly traverse the two places. For a three-year program, students will study for an equal duration in Shenzhen and Hong Kong to enjoy the best that each system can offer. After that, graduates will have the flexibility to further their studies in either the mainland or Hong Kong as they have qualifications that are recognized in both places. By drawing on the spirit of complementarity and transposing it into educational planning, positive results can be derived to move vocational education collaboration in the Bay Area one significant step ahead.
*The author is dean of the Li Ka Shing School of Professional and Continuing Education at the Hong Kong Metropolitan University