Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

An item on Feb 25, 1982, in China Daily showed workers at an optical instrument plant in Jilin province taking part in a one-year vocational course which aimed to raise their academic level.

At that time, the growing need for technical expertise had spawned increasing numbers of technical schools, evening classes and other vocational training programs in China.

In 1996, China released its first vocational education law to provide legal protection for the development and perfection of vocational training. Since then, China has been striving to improve.

In 2012, the first International Congress on Technical and Vocational Education and Training was held in Shanghai.

China is now home to about 11,700 vocational schools with 9.3 million fresh students enrolled annually and 26.9 million attending, according to the Ministry of Education.

The average employment rate of secondary vocational school students has exceeded 95 percent for 10 consecutive years, and that of advanced vocational school students has been more than 90 percent six months after graduation.

As a key source of human resources for China's economic development, vocational schools have contributed more than 70 percent of the fresh workforce in the country's manufacturing and emerging industries, the ministry said.

To integrate industry with education, China has established 56 supervisory committees for vocational education and 1,400 vocational education groups involving more than 30,000 companies.

Since early last year, the country has enhanced cooperative arrangement with the United Kingdom by setting up the China-UK Vocational Education Cooperation and Development Committee, which has launched various projects, including the establishment of a teacher training base in Shanghai that aims to deliver high-quality teachers for vocational education through exchanges.