Summary:
According to a report on vocational education published by China's Ministry of Education, a total of 1,327 higher vocational colleges recruited 3.38 million students in 2014. This exceeds the previous peak of 3.25 million new higher vocational students in 2011 and increases the proportion of students entering vocational rather than academic higher education to 47 per cent of all undergraduate admissions, reversing the trend of the previous two years. The total number of higher vocational students exceeded 10 million for the first time, with 10.07 million higher vocational students accounting for 40 per cent of all undergraduates in the country.

However, the opposite trend was seen at the upper secondary level, where the number of new vocational students fell by 7 per cent to 6.29 million. Although part of this trend is due to China's declining student age population, the corresponding drop in academic senior high school students was only 3 per cent, representing a shift from vocational to academic secondary education.

The report also showed that 96.5 per cent of secondary vocational school graduates went on to employment or further study in 2014, while graduates from higher vocational colleges had an employment rate of 91.5 per cent within six months of graduation.

In line with the decision to promote modern vocational education system by the State Council, Beijing Municipal Education Commission has published implementation guidance of following up the central governments decisions, which includes encouraging leading multinational enterprises and overseas vocational education institutions to jointly venture vocational education groups in Beijing. However, the Beijing municipal authorities will also significantly reduce the scale of secondary vocational education in the city over the next five years, to only 60,000 students. The number of secondary vocational schools in the capital will fall from 116 to 60 by 2020. The number of students studying at Beijing's higher vocational institutions will be around 100,000, while students in the pathway programme connecting tertiary vocational education with bachelor's degrees will be 10,000.

Analysis by Liu Xiaoxiao, Education Services Manager and Kevin Prest, Senior Analyst:
Higher vocational courses play an important role in China's higher education system, and most publicly announced figures relating to undergraduate students in China include both bachelors' degree and higher vocational students. However, despite the growth in higher vocational students in 2014, these students' proportion of all new undergraduates is still below the level seen for most of the last decade, with a peak of 54% being reached in 2006. Beijing’s policy of reducing the scale of secondary vocational schools is partly related to supporting vocational education development in neighbouring Tianjin and Hebei province, although the city's declining student age population also plays a major role.

Sources:
1. http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/s5147/201509/t20150916_208383.html
2. http://www.jyb.cn/zyjy/zyjyxw/201509/t20150916_637162.html
3. http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/s5147/201509/t20150901_204539.html