2016-08-26

On August 26^th, 2016, Chairman ZHANG Yi was invited to visit Ningbo Education Bureau and met with Mr. SHEN Jianguang, Director General. Both of them held the in-depth discussion on the topics of the development of vocational and technical education of Ningbo City, and the establishment of WorldSkills Innovation Lab. Mr. ZHANG Yi and Mr. SHEN Jianguang reached the consensus of the full cooperation in the related field. Mr. HE Qide, Deputy Director General of Ningbo Education Bureau, Mr. CHEN Hongyang, Division Chief of Ningbo Bureau, Mr. PANG Feilong, the former Director General of Cixi Education Bureau, and Mr. Walter HU, Ms. Ingrid JIANG of ECMDC also attended the meeting.

Mr. ZHANG Yi (Right) and Mr. SHEN Jianguang (Left)

Mr. SHEN Jianguang firstly expressed his warm welcome to the visiting guests and introduced Ningbo City and the current status of Ningbo vocational and technical education. Ningbo, the city with the territory of 9816 square kilometers and the population of 5.866 million is the second largest city of Zhejiang Province, and is one of the three economic centers as well. Ningbo is also the famous historical and cultural city in China and the famous home town for overseas Chinese. Ningbo is the modern international port city with the best and largest port in China. In the meanwhile, Ningbo is renowned with its manufacturing industry and is the first Pilot City of “Made in China 2025” Plan. According to the introduction, Ningbo is the Pilot Zone of National Vocational Education and Industrial Coordinated Innovation, and boasts the top-notch vocational and technical education, training system in China. At various national skills competitions of China, Ningbo has been ranked as top two all along and made the tremendous achievements in the vocational education and training.

Mr. ZHANG Yi extended his gratitude to the warm reception and congratulated on Mr. SHEN Jianguang on the remarkable achievements of Ningbo vocational education. He stated the purpose of this visiting, namely to present WorldSkills project and discuss the action plan of implementing the project in Ningbo. Mr. ZHANG Yi briefed the meetings between ECMDC and WorldSkills. He said, as the authoritative organization in the field of vocational skills, WorldSkills was actively engaged in the work of promoting various projects in the world along with the holding of WorldSkills Competition every two years. Through the communication and cooperation among vocational and technical talents, WorldSkills aims to enhance the professional skills of the youth around the world. Mr. ZHANG Yi and Mr. Theodor Niehaus, Chairman of WorldSKills Foundation had the in-depth discussion as for the road map of executing the related project in China. Mr. ZHANG Yi said, since Ningbo had the strong strength in vocational education, ECMDC would like to facilitate the establishment of WorldSkills Innovation Lab in Ningbo.

Mr. SHEN Jianguang indicated his earnest expectation for the establishment of WorldSkills Innovation Lab. He said, Ningbo Municipal Government hoped to provide the qualified talents to the work of industrial upgrading on reliance of the development of vocational education in order to improve the vocational skills of labor force. The implementation of WorldSkills project would surely open an international window for Ningbo vocational training, through which world-class vocational training, courses and talents would enter Ningbo and improve the competiveness of Ningbo vocational and technical talents. Mr. SHEN said, Ningbo Education Bureau would spare no efforts to cooperate with ECMDC in order to execute WorldSkills project as soon as possible. He said, he would report the progress of the work to Ningbo Municipal Government in due time with a view to receiving the further support.

Mr. ZHANG Yi said, ECMDC had developed the full-scale planning for WorldSkills Innovation Lab. On the basis of the previous work, ECMDC would work with Ningbo Education Bureau to finalize the top-level designing and gradually introduce international high-quality resources of all sorts to Ningbo in the working method, which would be in accordance with the actual needs of internationalization and localization. He believed that the development of any industries would be strictly embedded in the support of talents; to solidify the grounding of professional skills of talents, and to develop the creative capabilities of the talents would form the core competitiveness of a region in the future. Henceforth, on the basis of implementing WorldSkills Innovation Lab, ECMDC would work with Ningbo Education Bureau to explore the establishment of the cooperation mechanism of Sino-European youth innovation and entrepreneurship, which would become the important component of Sino-European people-to-people communication.

After the full discussion and the exchange of views, both parties had defined the follow-up work and the road map. Mr. ZHANG Yi and Mr. SHEN Jianguang indicated their full confidence in the execution of WorldSKills Innovation Lab in Ningbo.