Fuping Vocational Skill Education Center was established in 1994 with a total area of 518.88 mu (34.6 hectares) and a building area of 24 hectares. It is a comprehensive vocational school that integrates ordinary technical secondary school education, “3+2” training, “3+4” training, higher vocational education, adult education and short-term training. It is a national-level key secondary vocational school and one of the first batches of national secondary vocational education reform demonstration schools. In 2014, it was rated as a national-level advanced unit in vocational training and a national education advanced unit.
On May 4, 2019, with the coordination of the Government Offices Administration of The State Council and the Baoding Municipal Bureau of Education, the People’s Government of Baoding approved to establish Baoding Vocational Technical College (Fuping Campus) in Fuping Vocational Technical Education Center. So far, secondary vocational training in the center involves 11 majors, including automobile manufacturing and repairing, e-commerce, computer graphic design, among others; higher vocational training in the center involves 6 majors, including automobile manufacturing and repairing, e-commerce, among others. There are 7878 students and 527 full-time teachers in the school. Since 2013, over 6000 students have graduated from the center, including 3000 from registered poor families. 100% of students have found jobs after graduation, and 90.6% have remained in stable employment for three years. The center has led over 2000 poor households in the county to shake off poverty and cut off intergenerational transmission of poverty.
Fuping Vocational Technical Education Center follows the principle of “Find jobs for each talent developed to help the family shake off poverty” to capacitate students from poor villages with skills and help them to secure stable employment.
First, the Center takes advantages of the designated assistance from the central government agencies to strengthen its featured specialties. With the support of the Government Offices Administration of The State Council, the center joined hands with 8 famous automobile enterprises including China FAW Group, SAIC Motor, Changan Automobile, BYD Auto, BAIC Group, Geely Automobile, Great Wall Automobile and GAC Group to build the Fuping Mengxiang Automobile Training Base and explore the model for school-enterprise cooperation and teaching-industry integration. Eight enterprises donated training facilities worth over 60 million yuan for the training base, and dispatches technical personnel to the center to significantly improve its automobile training and talent development capacity. The Government Offices Administration of The State Council also established an educational grant fund worth 40 million yuan for excellent impoverished teachers and students in the center. With this, a lot of poor students have changed their fate through vocational training. Fuping Mengxiang Automobile Training Base has enrolled 4225 students from Fuping and surrounding counties, including 2000 students from registered poor families. 2300 students have found internships or jobs in automobile enterprises and they can earn 50,000 to 60,000 yuan annually. The center has fulfilled the promise of developing each student to help the family shake off poverty.
Second, the Center takes advantage of vocational education and provides employment training. The Center focuses around the development needs of leading industries, such as edible fungi planting, mountain apple planting, watermelon planting, cherry planting and folk tourism, integrates all kinds of training funds related to poverty reduction and agriculture, adopts “vocational education + enterprises”, “vocational education + cooperatives”, “vocational education + village committees” and other models, and creates “Wechat+” learning and service models to provide training and teaching. It uses mushroom greenhouses, cherry bases and pear bases as classrooms, and has provided training on mushroom, watermelon, cherry and pear planting for 47,500 people, including 34,200 from registered poor families, and has benefited 3652 poor families. In 2020, the school provides at least 3 job opportunities for each student with a professional qualification certificate or a course-completion certificate; all poor laborers could receive a subsidy to cover all the tuition fees when they found a job; students that successfully started up an industrial and commercial enterprise for the first time can have a one-off subsidy of 5,000 yuan, a guaranteed loan of up to 150,000 yuan and rental subsidies.
Zhao Shumei, a villager from Dadao Village of Fuping Town, successfully became an advanced technician engaging in pruning and bud-notching from an ordinary worker engaging in weeding and watering after participating in the new-type professional farmer training course. After her wages increased, she moved to a new house and bought a car, and her life was significantly improved.
Third, the Center established a platform to lead a region. In 2013, Fuping Vocational Technical Education Center uses Mengxiang Automobile Training Base to organize a “9+2” vocational education cooperation zone that covers 11 poor counties (Fuping, Quyang, Tangxian, Shunping, Wangdu, Boye, Yixian, Laiyuan and Laishui of Baoding, Hebei and Fanzhi and Wutai of Xinzhou, Shanxi) in Hebei and Shanxi. At the end of 2017, it successfully established the Beijing-Yantai Regional Vocational Education Poverty Reduction Cooperation Zone. Members of the zone include 33 national level poor counties in Hebei, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, and 38 vocational schools and 15 secondary and higher vocational schools in Beijing. They joined hands to explore a regional poverty reduction model featuring “collective vocational training + targeted poverty reduction + regional coordinated development” to share experience on targeted poverty reduction in contiguous poor areas, regional coordinated development, misplace development, complementary advantage utilization and resource sharing. Fuping Vocational Technical Education Center always focuses on serving poverty reduction and improving students’ ability for sustainable development and relying on the old Chinese proverb of “Give people fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach them how to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime.” It fully uses the advantages and features of vocational education, innovates poverty reduction methods and means, improves poor people’s self-development capacity, improves the indigenous power and strives to eventually realize steady poverty reduction and sustainable development.
