In recent years, taking Scientific Outlook on Development as a guide and accelerating the transformation of economic development mode as the main line, Daiyue District has vigorously implemented the strategy of opening up and innovation, and accelerated the construction of industrial characteristics and structural advantages in order to seize the commanding point for the future development.
All industrial enterprises within the district give full play to the role of the main body, adhere to independent innovation, and focus on the transformation and upgrading. Therefore, with the transformation and upgrading of economic development mode, demand quantity and demand quality for high quality workers have increased by leaps and bounds.
But the development situation of skilled talents, especially high skilled talents cannot meet the economic and social development in the district. Looking from total amount, senior workers, technicians (including senior technicians) and other high skilled talents account for a low proportion of employees. From the perspective of industrial structure, there are serious structural contradictions in the distribution of skilled talents, especially high skilled talents. They are mainly concentrated in traditional machinery, chemical industry, electronics and other industries, with shortage of high skilled talents in the new energy, industrial 4.0, cultural tourism and creative industries and other new industries. The serious shortage of high skilled talents has become the bottleneck of the social and economic development in the district.
We think that only by vigorously developing the technical education to develop more high skilled talents with a combination of both skills and theories for the society can this problem be fundamentally solved mainly from the following aspects:
ⅠAdhering to Educational Innovation and Developing Consensus on Serving the Local Economic and Social Development
In recent years, technical education has shown a good momentum of development. With the rapid development of social economy, enterprises' demand for highly skilled talents is increasing, and the shortage of skilled workers is serious. In the past two years, the state and the provinces and cities have introduced a series of documents on accelerating the development of technical education, and formulated a series of policies and measures to encourage the growth of skilled talents. At the same time, the social propaganda has been intensified. Through various forms of publicity, traditional concepts have been changed and a good image of the technical education has been established, initially forming a public opinion atmosphere which is conducive to the development. But generally speaking, real innovation factors are meager. How to speed up the technical education innovation?
1 Innovate the Notion of Running a School and Fully Expand the Social Training Function of Technical Colleges
Based on requirements of transformation and upgrading, we should serve enterprises' development to build the cultivation base for high skilled talents. Facing the employment work, we should provide services for the unemployed and laid-off workers to build employment training base. Geared to the needs of urbanization, we should also provide services for the transfer of rural labor force to build the training base for the rural labor force, so that the technical education and the current economic development are more closely combined.
2 Innovate School-running System and Strengthen Deep Combination with Enterprises
Firstly, this can obtain financial support, attract business capital, and improve conditions of running a school. Secondly, we can learn to understand the advanced technology and information about enterprises’ development in time, and apply them to the teaching practice. Thirdly, in this way we can introduce enterprises’ management to establish the campus culture fitting in with the corporate culture. Fourthly, it can make the enterprises more concerned about the development of the school to form a stable employment channel.
3 Innovate Cultivation System and Open up a Broad Source of Students
We should gradually transfer from enrolling junior middle school students as the main, to enrolling senior high school students and college graduates, and to the training of employees, making it become a normal social phenomenon for college graduates to receive training in technical schools.
Ⅱ Promote School-Enterprise Cooperation and Meet the Needs of Serving Transformation, Upgrading, and Development of Local Economy
School-enterprise cooperation is the only way to cultivate high skilled talents that can meet the needs of the society. So we must break the closed mode of running a school, "going outside" and "inviting inside". From "school-enterprise combination" to "school-enterprise integration", and through a variety of forms such as "ordered" cultivating, work-study combination, building the titled class jointly, we have built a close school-enterprise cooperation platform, effectively promoting the quality of cultivation of skilled talents. Our school has successively introduced Taian Jie Cheng Industry & Trade Co., Ltd, Tai'an Quanshifa Machinery Manufacturing Co., Ltd, which not only manufacture products, but also meet the student's internship teaching, thus solving both the students' internship training and the problem of insufficient funding for schools. It is really a way to kill two birds with one stone.
We should set up the school-enterprise cooperation specialty construction committee. Taking the specialty construction committee as the breakthrough point, we should carry out all-round, in-depth, multi-form cooperation with enterprises, and continue to explore the cooperation mode of realizing the close docking of schools and enterprise. School-enterprise cooperation specialty construction committees have been set up successively in our school’s majors such as mechanical & electrical engineering, numerical control, computer, modern agriculture, preschool education. Enterprises’ management elite and technology backbone are invited to school to give professional guidance, achieving good results.
Firstly, in the aspect of specialty construction and curriculum setting, the establishment of specialty construction coordination mechanism dominated by enterprises should be explored, and training courses should be developed mainly depending on enterprises.
Secondly, in the teaching faculty construction, the teaching staff based on school enterprise integration should be established, that is, the teaching faculty includes school teachers, enterprises’ technicians, and senior technicians. They not only take the teaching responsibility to cultivate students, but also participate in some of the technological innovation and scientific and technological projects of enterprises. Their teaching ability, teaching effect, and job performance are jointly assessed by the school and enterprises.
Thirdly, in practical teaching, a variety of ways have been introduced such as establishing training base by inviting enterprises to school, practice teaching management with school enterprise integration, setting up teaching area in the factory, forming the practice training base with the mode of “school in factory, factory in school”, and “front shop, back factory”.
Fourthly, in the ability evaluation, the system of evaluation of students' professional ability by enterprises has been introduced. According to the progress of teaching, the enterprise experts in conjunction with the appraisal organization carry out the evaluation of the students’ professional ability stage by stage, such as our school's Lenovo 3C order class. In this class the evaluation of students is made in accordance with the talent evaluation mechanism of Lenovo Group.
We have introduced the talent evaluation program of German’s automobile application and maintenance to our school’s ordered class with Beijing Sino-German Know-How. Students will be able to get the German qualification certificate after passing the assessment of employment.
Ⅲ Strengthen the Connotation Construction, and Lay a Solid Foundation for Serving Local Economic and Social Development
How to promote the level of professional construction, and improve the quality of skilled talents training, is the eternal theme of the connotation construction of technical education. To strengthen the connotation construction is, focusing on the specialty construction and high skilled talents training, to try hard to cultivate knowledge-oriented, technical and compound talents according to market demand and employment orientation.
1 Strengthening the Construction of Teaching Staff
The level of teaching staff is the key to the connotation construction. Adhering to the policy of "making good use of existing talents, introducing urgently required talents, and cultivating backbone of talents", constantly improving the mechanism of "introducing, cultivating, using, and maintaining talents", through the implementation of relevant measures, we have expanded the scale of teaching staff, optimized the structure and strengthened the construction of teaching staff, thus forming a high quality faculty group with a reasonable age structure, coordinated distribution of professional title, and a high proportion of double-type teachers.
We have selected, supported and encouraged teachers to actively participate in continuing learning, and constantly improve their theoretical level and practical ability through a variety of ways such as overseas training, national and provincial backbone teachers training, factory practice, and on-the-job training. At present, the school has 288 professional teachers, 162 teachers of professional class and practice guidance, and 136 double-type teachers. More than 200 batches of teachers have participated in training successively. The overall quality of teachers has been comprehensively promoted.
2 Improving the Quality of Education and Teaching
We should always take improving the quality of talent training as the core of the connotation construction, and quality of education and teaching as the starting point and end result of all college work. Professional skill teaching is the foundation of technical colleges. With students being the center, and according to the standard of vocational skill, we should set up working scenes as much as possible, help students improve their interest, and enhance their sense of responsibility and sense of accomplishment. In strengthening professional education at the same time, we should pay attention to the quality education, cultivate students' quality of professional ethics, and improve the students' ideological and political morality. At the same time, taking campus cultural activities and social practice activities as the main content, we should improve student's cultural accomplishment.
In short, high skilled talents are the current support of industrial 4.0 manufacturing, and the fundamental guarantee for the core competitiveness of enterprises. Technical education is the basis of high skilled talents training. In order to improve the quality of skilled talents, we should do a good job of technical education to provide services for transformation and upgrading of the local economy.
Note: This is my recent translation of technical education, and the picture is taken from the Internet.
