Study On Reforms Of Enhancing The Attractiveness Of Vocational Upper Secondary Education In Finland During The Recent Ten Years

Enhancing the attractiveness of vocational education has been as a strategic goal during reforms and development of vocational education in many countries of the world since 21st century. In recent years, with China's rapidly economic development and upgrading industrial structure, skilled personnel are in urgent need. The problem of low attractiveness of vocational education has been gradually caught attention in China. Currently, how to improve the attractiveness of vocational education and maintain sustainable development of vocational education is one of hot topics on policy, research and practice concering vocational education in China. During the recent ten years, in Finland many reforms related to improving the attractiveness of vocational upper secondary education have been developing and accumulating a lot of experience.This paper consists of six sections:Section one is introduction. This section is to explain the purpose of the study, to review the previous studies on Finland's reforms of enhancing the attractiveness of vocational upper secondary education and on how to improve the attractiveness of vocational education in China, to define some core concepts, and to introduce the ideas and methods using in this study.Section two introduces the theory of "model of attractiveness of vocational upper secondary education" created by Lena Siikaniemi, a senior scholar in Finland. The theory, which is used as the theoretical basis, manly includes contents on observation levels, one model, some elements and factors of attractiveness of vocational upper secondary education.Section three anlayzes contextual factors of reforms on enhancing the attractiveness of vocational upper secondary education in Finland. These factors involve Finland profile (geography, demography, economics, politics, cultural strategies and education system), challenges of the times (globalization, technological progress, sustainable development economic crisis), history and practical problems and so on.Section four explains the contents of reforms of enhancing the attractiveness of vocational upper secondary education in Finland during the recent ten years, which mainly include strengthening vocational education legislation, improving the organization and management, strengthening the links between vocational education and labor markets, enhancing the quality management of vocational upper secondary education, introducing performance based funding system, improving requirements for competence of teacher qualification, promoting professional development of teachers, enhancing student counselling services, communicating vocational upper secondary education and general education, conducting various vocational skills competitions and promoting internationalisation of vocational upper secondary education.Section five reveals characteristics of reforms on attractiveness of vocational upper secondary education in Finland. These features include covering a wide range, people as the centre of attention, results-orientation, process-oriented management, quality as foundation, work-based ways, industries and enterprises widely participating in vocational education, focusing on the effect of advocacy and seeking assurances from laws and regulations, etc. This section also analysizes effectiveness of these reforms.Final section illustrates some inspirations from Finland's experience with enhancing the attractiveness of vocational upper secondary education. These inspirations, which will be beneficial to the reform of enhancing the attractiveness of vocational education in China, include reforming the management system of vocational education, establishing long-term mechanism of labor demand forecast, building quality management and monitoring system for improving the quality of vocational education, increasing investment in vocational education, founding of performance evaluation mechanism, setting up student guidance and counselling service system, promoting balanced development between vocational education and general education, improving flexibility of vocational education system, making an effort to enhance vocational skills competition and expand the publicity effect, industries and enterprises fully participating in vocational education, improving teacher qualifications and promoting professional development of teachers and so on.