A signing ceremony of the strategic cooperation between the Open University of China (OUC) and Anhui Xinhua Education Group was held at the OUC on the morning of 1 November 2018. Liu Chen, deputy secretary of the Party Committee of the OUC, and Xu Shaobing, executive vice president of Anhui Xinhua Education Group, signed the Strategic Cooperation Agreement on behalf of the two sides respectively.
According to the goals of the cooperation, the two sides will play to their respective advantages, and absorb applied talent training experiences and the achievements of industry and business. They will introduce high-quality certification resources including the national vocational qualification certificate, the certificate of vocational skills, and the professional ability training certificate, and through the credit bank of the OUC, realise the accumulation and transformation of the learning outcomes of non-degree education and degree education credits. The two sides will make full use of technical experts and high-quality teaching resources provided by industry and businesses and rely on the OUC’s school-running network and public service platform to realise the sharing of high-quality education resources, in order to provide diverse education and training services for on-the-job personnel. Both parties will strengthen the construction of a full and part time teaching team staffed by “teachers with dual qualifications” at the OUC by employing professionals and technical experts that have both rich practical experience and high theoretical literacy in production, operation, and management from the industry and businesses.
In his speech, Xu Shaobing mentioned that Xinhua Education Group was founded in 1988. After 30 years of operation, it has successfully built many educational brands, including Xinhua Computing, New East Cuisine, Wantong Automobile, Omick Western Catering College, Cuisine Academy, and U-Star Driving. It has opened 170 schools and colleges in 30 provincial capitals and 17 regions nationwide, with nearly 200,000 on-campus students. As a result, it has become a nationally renowned professional education brand. He hopes that through the signing of the cooperation agreement, both parties could join hands, share resources, complement each other’s advantages, and make joint progress, so as to satisfy the needs of the students and gain social recognition.
In his speech, Liu Chen said that the agreement represents a new consensus reached by the OUC and Xinhua Education Group over the past four years of cooperation. The advantages of Xinhua Education Group in basic education and non-degree education complement the OUC’s advantages in remote education. Since the establishment of the OUC, an "OUC Community" school running model has been formed that includes an education informatisation model integrating modern information technology and distance open education, a "Six-Network Integration" personnel training model with the goal of ensuring and improving the quality of the learner development model, a "Credit Bank" model with the goal of promoting the certification, accumulation, and transformation of learning results in formal and informal education, and a non-degree education model to meet diverse and personalised lifelong learning needs. The Open University for Older Adults has been established and a national experiential and demonstration centre for the elderly has been approved. The "Long March Belt" educational targeted poverty alleviation project has been implemented and targeted assistance has been provided to 26 state-level impoverished counties in 12 provinces and municipalities. He hopes that both sides will explore new experiences and models of non-degree and vocational education so as to make cooperation a new highlight and calling card of the OUC.
Leaders from some subordinates of Xinhua Education Group, including president of Beijing Wantong Automobile School, Pan Yaocai; president of Beijing New East Cuisine School, Shen Dajun; president of Beijing Xinhua Computer School, Wang Jiaxian; manager of Beijing Omick Education Technology Co., Ltd. Wang Hongliang; and manager of Beijing Cuisine Academy East Education Technology Co., Ltd., Zhang Ruilai; together with the heads of the related departments of the OUC, attended the signing ceremony.
By Yuan Wenwu, OUC