Hefei, Anhui, 28-29 October 2025 — To advance the high-quality development of Seniors University of China (SUC) in line with the 2024–2035 Master Plan on Building China into a Leading Country in Education and to benchmark progress against Seniors University of China Construction Action Plan (2023-2025), a national work conference on the development of the SUC was convened in Hefei.
Hosted by SUC, the session brought together FAN Xianrui, Vice President of the Open University of China (OUC) and SUC and approximately 110 participants, including heads of SUC’s 44 provincial branches, representatives of branch campuses and co-construction units, and heads of relevant headquarters departments.
Vice President FAN delivered the keynote address entitled “Stepping Up to Our Mission through Collaborative Innovation - Accelerating High-Quality Development of SUC.” She stressed that the institution must seize the present historic window for senior learning, act as a national path-finder and translate national strategy into concrete educational practice. FAN outlined priorities in four areas: establishing complete governance system for senior education, building a national digital-intelligent service platform system, coordinating educational delivery with teacher development, and creating a fully integrated teaching-and-learning model tailored to older adults, thereby accelerating the development of SUC.
Heads from thirteen branches and branch campuses shared experiences on the “Sustainable Development of Senior Education,” covering top-level design, government support, system building, platform resources, physical campus operation and signature activities.
Participants also heard from representatives from the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, Anhui Provincial Department of Education, Changzhou Municipal Education Bureau, Huzhou Municipal Education Bureau, Open University of Fujian for the Aged, Guangzhou Elderly University, Chuzhou City Vocational College and Qingcui Road Community Elderly School in Shibalihe Street, Guancheng District, Zhengzhou City, Henan Province. Themed lectures were given by Professor WU Feng of Peking University and Professor MA Lihua of East China Normal University. The participants joined group discussions around the keynote and case presentations and visited the Anhui Distance-Learning Demonstration Base for Senior Education.
The meeting successfully summarised SUC’s phased achievements, exchanged typical local solutions, analysed emerging opportunities and challenges, mapped out responses to deep-seated and common problems, built system-wide consensus and sketched preliminary directions for the 15th Five-Year Plan period, all with the aim of leveraging system-wide synergy to advance high-quality senior education nationwide.
Contributed by SUC