Fresh from securing five gold and two silver medals at the 48th WorldSkills Competition last month, Shanghai is pushing to reform its vocational education system and shed its long-held "hierarchical" reputation as high-achieving students increasingly opt for integrated vocational pathways.

"Vocational education is just one of many life options. It is a misconception that it locks people into a low-level track," Yang Zhenfeng, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, said during a news briefing on vocational education reform on Oct 14.

He stressed vocational and general education are different types, not tiers, of learning.

"In the age of artificial intelligence, knowledge alone is far from enough — the core is problem-solving ability," Yang said, adding that schools should not blindly pursue elevation to undergraduate status but align with industrial demand in key sectors such as integrated circuits and biomedicine.

Home to about 270,000 vocational students, Shanghai has built a modern system featuring vertical progression pathways, horizontal academic integration, and deep industry-education collaboration. It operates 448 integrated vocational program tracks and 15 industry-education clusters.

The city was the first in China to include vocational experience in junior high school assessments, with about 100,000 middle school students participating each year.

Five local institutions introduced their industry-aligned practices at the briefing.

Shanghai Urban Construction Vocational College, which leads a national urban renewal industry-education community, has developed a smart building inspection program, noting that "machines collect data, but risk assessment and judgment still depend on people."

Shanghai Technical Institute of Electronics & Information operates an in-factory training model for the integrated circuit sector, with more than 90 percent of graduates retained in key roles. Shanghai Nanhu Vocational & Technical College integrates WorldSkills standards into its curriculum, and 93.1 percent of its faculty are dual-qualified teachers with both teaching credentials and industrial practice experience.

"The competition ends, but its standards live on," the schools said.

Source: China Daily