Vocational education provides diverse opportunities
Topical issues
2015 年 3 月 28 日
For years, there has been much hot air among bureaucrats about “multiple pathways for students” in Hong Kong.
Despite that, the New Senior Secondary (NSS) curriculum is essentially university-oriented, deeming that academic exam on students as the only way to evaluate talent. Vocational education has been marginalized.
Not surprisingly, in 2014, only 40.4 percent of day school candidates met the minimum admission requirements for Bachelor’s Degree programs. As for the remainder, some plunge into the job market prematurely; others scrimp to pay for the expensive Associate Degree programs, only to find that chances of transferring to university are just too slim.
Many more fall into the ranks of the jobless. Between 2012 and January this year, the unemployment rate among the age group 15-19 has been lingering between 10 percent and 15 percent.
In this regard, the well-established vocational education system in Germany may provide some lesson for the city. In Germany, more than 60 percent of young people enroll into the renowned “dual system”.
Students study at school for one to two days and undergo apprentice training in companies for the rest of the week, with training allowance paid by the employers. Currently there are as many as 340 state-recognized occupations for students to choose, ranging from technician to commercial clerk.
The dual system does not only guarantee a sufficient and stable supply of talents for different industries, but also helps young people accumulate practical work experience and facilitates their transition to the workplace. According to Eurostat, between 2012 and 2014, youth unemployment rate of Germany was the lowest in Europe, staying below 8 percent even in the aftermath of the financial tsunami.
In Hong Kong, vocational education is underdeveloped. Category B (Applied Learning) subjects in the NSS curriculum merely give an overview of industries, but cannot effectively impart practical work skills or help students acquire professional qualifications. No wonder only few students choose these subjects.
Modeled on the dual system of Germany, the Pilot Training and Support Scheme of Vocational Training Council (VTC) provides some reason for optimism. Still, there are several issues worth noting:
First, as in Germany, the business sector should play a significant role in the curriculum design, quality assurance and assessment. This ensures that the curriculum caters to the changing needs of the industry and enhances recognition of the program. As it is not compulsory for companies to join chambers in Hong Kong, the administration should also give due regard to the question of how to coordinate non-chamber companies and monitor the quality of their training.
Second, the government should make sure that the scheme is dovetailed to other education and career pathways, rather than being isolated into yet another dead-end that leads students to nowhere. To support students transferring to university, Germany has allocated funds for universities to tailor-make suitable programs and accredit vocational training towards university courses. These bridging measures deserve serious consideration by the administration.
More importantly, the government should continue to roll out higher qualifications of vocational training for graduates to pursue. In the long term, authorities should consider revising the qualifications framework and recognizing the qualifications of excellent vocational training courses as correspondingly equivalent with Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees.
Third, a substantial increase in the scale of the pilot scheme, currently providing only 2,000 places, is needed if it is to generate any meaningful impact. By then, more students would be able to choose and excel in academic or vocational education, whichever suits them best. This, however, also means that VTC would be in direct competition with grammar schools and might have an impact on the admissions and staff establishment of the latter, which would definitely arouse public concerns.
Last but not least, vocational education spreads over several policy areas, including development of industries and trends in labor market. This calls for far-sighted planning and coordination of different departments. The administration should accord due importance to vocational education as a development strategy.
In a word, the Hong Kong government should shed the “one-size-fits-all” mindset and revitalize our education system by reinforcing vocational education.
A broad and well-articulated multi-pathways system should be constructed under which students can freely explore diverse study and career options and climb up the ladder according to their interests and talents. Hong Kong doesn’t lack talents; it is just that our education system is too fixated on a few academic “geniuses”.
Note: This article is published on EJ Insight:
http://www.ejinsight.com/20150417-hk-students-need-diverse-study-and-career-pathways/
For Chinese version, here is the link.
|
Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying put forward in his policy address last month some new measures regarding innovation and technology. Admittedly, this reflects the administration’s commitment to the innovation industry, but the current technology-led and piecemeal approach still has much room for improvement. In this regard, Finland’s success in innovation, especially its systems approach, might serve as a lesson for the city.
Finland’s funding mechanism would be a good starting point of analysis. Currently, the Hong Kong government does provide some form of support to the innovation industry, but that is inadequate and ill-positioned. While Tekes, Finnish funding agency for innovation, handed out around HK$5 billion to the industry in 2013 alone, our Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) has approved merely HK$8.9 billion between 1999 and 2014.
More than 40 percent of Tekes’ funding was allocated to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and 680 start-ups benefited. In contrast, our ITF funding is highly skewed towards the public sector in terms of the application requirements and the amount of funding.
Among the four schemes of ITF, the Innovation and Technology Support Programme, which accounted for 83.5 percent of the total approved funding as at the end of 2014, requires the lead applicants to be publicly funded universities or R&D centers for most of the projects. This meant little help for industry-led R&D activities.
In addition to boosting funding support to private R&D activities, the government may consider integrating existing services and providing one-stop matchmaking and business counseling to successful ITF applicants.
It is also important to strengthen the demand-side policy, for example, by introducing special clauses to the government procurement policy to encourage SME participation. In fact, Finland already started similar reform in 2013.
Albeit without much detail, the “Enterprise Support Scheme” announced in the Policy Address has the potential to provide incentives for private R&D. To avoid letting slip promising proposals, industry participation in the vetting process is indispensable.
Innovation is not just about high tech, but also about engaging the society. Investing in R&D is just half the story. The boundaries of innovation should be pushed and extended beyond the laboratory.
Some foreign governments have tried to incorporate open innovation and crowd-sourcing into public administration. For instance, Challenge.gov of the US, which calls for citizens’ solutions to technical and policy challenges posted online, has attracted submissions from 42,000 people since 2010.
Another example is Helsinki, Finland, where the government drafted a Local Digital Agenda, proposing to test novel ideas such as smart urban design and low-carbon economy in the community.
These Living Labs are usually public-private partnerships. Local community does not only try out the new technologies, but also returns feedback, “co-design” and “co-create” with the project team. Such bottom-up, user-driven innovation can cultivate the culture of entrepreneurship and innovation in the society.
Back in Hong Kong, the CE expressed interest in developing East Kowloon into a smart city. The “Living Lab” model that blends innovation and technology into daily life and engages citizens in the process certainly deserves consideration by the government.
Innovation is not a one-way process that turns lab findings into products, but a complex process embedded in the social context, progressing in tandem with other areas of development. Therefore, the government should seek not only technical advances, but also social innovations.
Finland’s education system, for example, is one of the most egalitarian in the world, honoring the principles of “no child left behind” and joyful teaching and learning. Students enjoy free education and are always eligible to progress to the next stage after completing one level of study. In 2012, the ratio of university graduates among working population is 39.7 percent in Finland, much higher than the 26.2 percent in Hong Kong.
Finland has adopted an ecosystem-based approach to its innovation strategy. Education, culture, welfare, urban design… all policy areas work to facilitate innovation.
Hong Kong’s innovation policy needs to transcend the one-way, technology-led model. More emphasis should be put on governance and social innovations. We hope that the Innovation and Technology Bureau, for which the funding request is now stuck in filibustering by pan-democratic lawmakers, will be established soon and that a more systematic innovation strategy will be formulated.
(This article has been published on EJ Insight:http://www.ejinsight.com/20150202-systems-approach-needed-for-innovation/)
A detailed analysis of the Finnish experience could be found (Chinese version).
Note: Many foreign governments allocate a larger share of resources to education than Hong Kong does.