The Basic Experience in Constructing China’s Modern Vocational Education System

Abstract In 2010, the Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium- and Long-Term Education Reform and Development (2010–2020) first proposed the strategic goal of a “Modern Vocational Education System”. Within just fifteen short years, by 2025, China had rapidly advanced the construction of this system, which continues to be refined. This paper comprehensively employs the research paradigms of historical institutionalism and comparative institutionalism. It first divides this process into three stages: blueprint design and preliminary exploration, framework construction and type establishment, and “Three Integrations” guidance and system consolidation. On this basis, through an in-depth analysis of the structural contradictions in the development of China’s vocational education, the paper distills a “five-pronged” approach to institutional innovation: activating the system’s momentum through central-local synergy, establishing the system’s foundation by defining its type, perfecting the system’s skeleton by building complete educational levels, injecting vitality into the system through industry-education integration, and expanding the system’s space by taking vocational education globally. These five pieces of experience mutually reinforce each other, together constituting the institutional experience of the rapid establishment of China’s modern vocational education system.