Occasional Paper - TAFE Directors Australia

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the economy and society for high quality labour and
skilled talents.
According to the Outline, China will focus on further
strengthening VET development in the next ten
years:
First, by continuing to enlarge vocational education
enrolment in schools/colleges in both
secondary level education and higher
education, especially to keep nearly the
same enrolment scale between vocational
schools and academic schools in the
secondary education level.
Second, by encouraging enterprises, industries and
society to join more readily in the running
of VET.
Third, by more rapidly developing VET in rural areas.
Fourth, by focusing on enhancing VET quality
through developing employment
orientated VET and combining
more tightly schools with enterprises.
Fifth, by making VET more involved in providing an
attractive learning environment.
Sixth, by increasing input of the government to VET.
With a background of globalisation, the efforts to
strengthen China’s VET cannot be undertaken in
isolation. In fact, China has studied many countries’
experiences of developing VET including their
frameworks, systems and management approaches.
In particular, we have a long, constructive and
close dialogue with Germany, Australia, the United
Kingdom, Japan, and others. The Outline stresses
that China must extend its cooperation with other
countries to further develop VET.
Cooperation between China and Australia in
VET has a long history and occurs in many ways
including the joint delivery of transnational VET
programs by PRC and Australian VET institutions,
the TAFE Directors Australia (TDA)/China Education
Association for International Exchange (CEAIE)
mentoring and leadership programs and the
2002–2007 Australia China (Chongqing) Vocational
Education and Training Project. The Australian
Qualifications Framework, the Training Packages
and Skills Australia Act 2008 (2005), all give us
much inspiration. In the future, China looks forward
to strengthening and broadening high quality VET
linkages with Australia to the mutual benefit of both
countries.