In Tianjin’s public-transport maintenance services, deputy director Wang Honggang of the Tianjin Electrical Control Center for Maintenance of Public Transport is a big name. He himself has often been named a Tianjin model worker, and his apprentices have taken top prizes in maintenance-skills competitions in Tianjin. However, when he first arrived from Shaanxi’s rural Fengxiang County ten years ago, he was simply another stranger with a dream.

With neither skills nor a degree, how did Wang Honggang launch his career? His answer: through the programme “Realising Dreams of Further Education”.

To this point, Wang Honggang has completed junior college, and is now in the undergraduate Business Administration programme in the School of Distance Education at Tianjin University. Young people from rural areas, influenced by him, have been taking part “Realising Dreams of Further Education”, and turning themselves into the backbones of their businesses.

“On-location” Teaching Services

In 2016, the Ministry of Education and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions together launched “Realising Dreams of Further Education”, bringing together the resources of the educational system with the organisational capabilities of the trade unions to enhance the skills of migrant workers. Over more than two years, these bodies have collaborated on bringing continuing education to migrant workers by integrating instruction with employment and giving equal priority to degree and non-degree education. According to incomplete statistics, about 300 universities and colleges in 21 provinces have gotten involved, and more than one million migrant workers have benefited.

As the old song says: “I have no money when I have time, and I have no time when I have money.” Most migrant workers lack both the money and time for education. According to a special investigation by Hunan Radio and TV University, there are 1.452 million migrant workers in Hunan Province, 83.1% of whom have schooling below junior-middle school, with about half making a monthly income of less than 2000 yuan. When it comes to learning, lack of time is their most prominent difficulty.
Consideration was given to their problems when it came to planning the programme. The plan stated: “By 2020, 1.5 million eligible migrant workers in need of degree improvement will receive funding for degree continuing education and corresponding technical-skills training. The aim is to enable them to enhance their qualifications free of charge”. “Free of charge” is the key phrase here.

Given the low level of education and limited time and energy migrant workers have, local authorities do what they can to smooth away difficulties and bring services to them.

Tianjin is one municipality that is doing so, and at the same time aspects such as registration, payment, entrance requirements and the like are taken care of by the enterprises employing these workers.

Hainan Province has followed suit. Hainan Radio and TV University, the only provincially administrated university for adults, has been entrusted by the province to implement a similar plan. For instance, each eligible migrant worker will receive 4,000 yuan in subsidies from the Hainan special-education fund. 1,000 yuan are given for tuition in each of the first and second years, while the remaining 2,000 is granted to those who have completed the course work and graduated. Hainan RTVU has set up tutorial centres in all counties and cities, and teachers are sent to worker homes for face-to-face tutorials.

Fujian Province is also putting in place funding guarantees. A special fund has been set up at the provincial level to subsidise the programme, and the amount of money in it will increase year by year as more and more students take part. In 2017, 10 million yuan were disbursed, with the provincial Education Department and the Federation of Trade Unions each getting 5 million. The provincial Federation of Trade Unions allocated another 5 million yuan to support vocational training, the federations in districts under its jurisdiction, and provincial industrial trade unions, in order to enable them to give skills training to employees.

Henan Province, meanwhile, has made efforts to have the government, trade unions, employers and learners all help fund the programme. Xuchang Vocational Technical College has joined the Xuchang Federation of Trade Unions to bring construction, insurance and mechanical-manufacturing enterprises on board, and coordinate with their trade unions and human-resources departments. Cooperative-training agreements are signed with enterprises whose employees all work in the same area. Their tuition fee is paid through “the three-three system”, which splits it among universities, enterprises and individual learners by way of tuition reductions, contributions, and direct payments. Meanwhile, the teaching plans are in accordance with the needs of the enterprises.

Using the Internet to Enable Education

How do migrant workers prefer to be taught? Investigation has shown the answer: online. This is because they find it hard to rush from work to a distant classroom.

The Open University of China is experienced at offering online education, and modern information technology allows it to reach urban and rural areas throughout the country. It has 3.59 million active students, including nearly 200,000 farmers, who are able to study anywhere and at any time, enabling them to do so without giving up their jobs. Internet technologies allow the university to offer both teaching support and management, as well as services such as registration, course selection and examinations. Information on the relevant national and provincial polices is published in a timely manner, and resources and support are provided free of charge. The OUC’s platforms encourage students to ask questions, and it has also put together teaching teams for one-on-one tutorials and question-and-answer sessions.

Because modern information technology enables continuing education to go beyond the traditional form (correspondence school), Anhui Province has been promoting the use of the internet to educate migrant workers there. Its platform integrates teaching, management and monitoring, and has 66 universities and other educational institutions offering over 2,000 courses. It has 200,000 students, of whom nearly 20,000 are migrant workers, and so far they have made over 90 million visits to the platform.

A credit bank for continuing education is also being built in Anhui Province, and it is already able to undertake the validation, accumulation and transfer of credits.

Another innovation of Anhui is its “course supermarket” – a variety of offerings for migrant workers by universities and other educational institutions on its platform. The “supermarket” is already offering more than 200 courses to migrant workers free of charge, and more than 5,000 have registered for it.

Education with a Practical Focus

Migrant workers do not aim to get diplomas for their own sake. The important question is: what should they learn?

The answer is: what they need to in order to further their job prospects while also meeting the needs of national industrial transformation by promoting cooperation between enterprises and colleges.

In Shanghai Municipality, for example, the Education Commission and the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions have been working together since 2016 to upgrade the degrees of millions of employees. So far, more than 373,000 employees, including migrant workers, have been covered, with cooperation between colleges and enterprises being emphasised. This includes sending teachers to the enterprises in order to serve employees such as migrant workers.

Fujian Province is also undertaking training innovations. Fujian Radio and TV University has the support of the provincial Department of Education to set up a combination of online and offline education for adult worker-students, covering both general and specialized education with a focus on job training. Entrance examinations and admissions are organized separately to allow enterprise employees to enter junior college. 8 areas of study were offered in a pilot project in 2017, with 1,100 migrant workers enrolling, and these increased to 10 in 2018, with Fujian Radio and TV University collaborating with Southeast (Fujian) Automobiles and a number of other companies to set these up.

“This programme is providing continuing education to industries, enterprises and migrant workers in all areas, and has received a positive response”, said Lei Ming, deputy director of the Department of Vocational and Adult Education in the Ministry of Education. “Realising Dreams of Further Education” is attracting more and more attention from enterprises and workers, and a host of outstanding students have changed their lives. It has become well-known among workers as a way to upgrade skills, and is effective at promoting continuing education.

By China Education Daily