On August 17th, 2015, on behalf of the Sino-British College (SBC), Gordon Callan, SBC’s Director of Teaching and Learning, was invited to attend a training programme organized by Logis in Qingdao for Chinese vocational colleges interested in developing apprenticeships in China.
It has been one year since the Ministry of Education launched its pilot programme of apprenticeships for the vocational education reform. Recently, the enterprise-centric apprenticeships programme has been introduced by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and Ministry of Finance.
Recently, apprenticeships have been growing in popularity in Chinese higher education, especially for vocational colleges, this because apprenticeships present not only a good way of strengthening the relationship between colleges and industrial partners, but can also improve students’ employment competences.
The training event lasted two days in total and all participants were college teachers. The workshop focused on apprenticeship policies, different models, the case of the logistics industry and cooperation models between colleges and enterprises.
Gordon was the key speaker, introducing the implementation of apprenticeships in the UK, which included the development of apprenticeships in UK and the benefit of apprenticeships for employers and organizational businesses. He also included a case study of Barclays, which examined the advantages of implementing apprenticeships for enterprise. In addition, he used the logistics industry as an example to elaborate how apprenticeships could work.
Gordon said, ‘This was a great opportunity for SBC to make further contributions to higher education in China and I was very pleased that the event went so well. It was very stimulating to have the opportunity to meet and discuss issues relating to apprenticeships with fellow academics.’
