Since its first release in 2012 the “Annual Report on Quality in China's Higher Vocational Education”, put together by the Shanghai Academy of Educational Sciences and the MyCOS Institute, looks at student development, school work, government leadership and service areas. These four areas are used to analyse the quality of higher vocational education and objectively comment on the achievements and problems of higher vocational education.

How has higher vocational education, a leading force in vocational education reform and active part of higher education reform and development, achieved in the above four areas over the last year? The authors of this report analysed publicised annual quality reports for 1139 higher vocational institutions nationwide and collated approximately 90,000 sample questionnaires from 2013 higher vocational graduates to put together this report.

On Student Development dimension, through analysis of five indices, including employment rate half a year after graduation, monthly income and relevance to science, engineering, agriculture and medical specialisms, compared to the last two years, four indices have shown growth. Only specialism relevance has remained stable.

On School Work, core content of averages includes: student/teacher ratio, dual qualified teacher ratio, apparatus and equipment value per student, average student time spent using practical bases on campus and average student time spent in training bases off-campus. Compared with data from the previous year, we can see that five teaching resource indices have increased, but there are imbalances in different regions.

On Government Leadership, the report shows that the government is leading the reform and development of vocational education. Special financial leverage is increasing significant in projects such as the establishment of core schools, specialism establishment, and training bases establishment. Higher vocational education is receiving increasing financial investment.

On Service Areas, the report shows that there has been continued link-up between specialisms and industry. Service regions are developing. Groups of outstanding higher vocational institutions with specialism strengths are being formed.