China's Path to Education Modernization – serie

The establishment and improvement of the education institution is an important factor to promote and guarantee the reform and development of the education system. From the perspective of institution analysis, this book shows the path and strategy of China’s educational modernization by combing and analyzing the process and elements of the educational institution changes in the past 40 years of China’s reform and opening up for researchers, educators and readers who want to understand the changes in China’s education institution. The book is based on the school, with thematic topics as the main line, respectively presenting school-running institution reform, education leadership and management institution reform at the macro-level; school leadership and management institution, curriculum and teaching material institution, teacher institution and education evaluation institution at the micro-level; and the examination enrollment and admission institution, the education supervision institution, the education finance institution and the education opening institution as an important support for school education. This three-dimensional institution analysis shows that China’s education institution and education reform in the past 40 years is a gradual process of continuous standardization and rule of law from the promotion of point reforms with education policies and regulations to the regulation of education order with education laws in promotion of the construction of education institutions. It is also a process of empowering by the rule of law, promoting consultation and co-governance, and stimulating the vitality of various educational stakeholders. It’s a process from regulation to empowerment.

The tremendous economic and social changes over the past 40 years of reform and opening-up have provided a seedbed for the historic achievements in the development of vocational education in China.The development of vocational education over the past 40 years can be divided into three phases: the restoration and development phase of secondary vocational education in the 1980s, the phase of stability and consolidation in the 1990s, and the phase of strengthening the system and comprehensively deepening foundations since the 21st century. From starting everything from scratch in the 1980s to the intense hard work in the 1990s, and then to the scientific development in the 21st century, vocational education has come through a crucial historical period. It has developed more systemically and deeply than any other period in history. At present, China’s vocational education has entered a new era. The main challenges faced by vocational education in the new era include: to further consolidate the status of vocational education and accomplish each connection smoothly; to establish a national institutional platform for school-enterprise cooperation; to set up a scientific assessment system in order to analyze labor demand for industrial development; to build national professional teaching standards for vocational education; to establish a standardized and systematic training system for vocational education teachers; and to enhance top-level design and advance the implementation of a modern apprenticeship system.