Jürg Burri, Ambassador of Switzerland to China, delivers a keynote speech at the Seventh Sino-Swiss Economic Forum in Beijing on January 18 (COURTESY) 

“Vocational and professional education and training (VPET) is a great way to bring young people directly into companies. We have courageous Swiss companies who are offering the double track education model in China. We can be proud of our companies that are acting as pioneers and showcasing the successful Swiss education system,” Jürg Burri, Ambassador of Switzerland to China, said in a keynote speech at the Seventh Sino-Swiss Economic Forum (SSEF) on January 18.   

Diplomats, officials, scholars and business leaders from China and Switzerland vowed at the forum to promote wider cooperation on vocational education between the two countries. 

For more than a decade, Switzerland has been ranked the world’s most innovative and competitive economy and has one of the lowest youth unemployment rates in Europe, even during the pandemic-hit years, Burri was quoted as saying in a white paper circulated during the event.   

In the white paper, titled China-Switzerland White Paper on Vocational Education, Burri said one of the reasons for Switzerland’s strong and resilient economy, along with excellent infrastructure and efficient state organization, is the Swiss education system, including its successful VPET system.    

The system is highly responsive to the labor market and provides a steady supply of skilled employees for Swiss companies every year. It is divided into two sectors: upper-secondary-level vocational education and training and tertiary-level professional education.   

China and Switzerland have maintained regular dialogue on education policy since 2012. The two countries institutionalized dialogue on VPET in 2017 with the signing of an MoU between the two countries to encourage collaboration and the establishment of several instruments to support it.   

While China has been Switzerland’s biggest trading partner in Asia since 2010, many Swiss companies operate R&D, production, and distribution facilities in China. Drawing inspiration from their VPET activities in Switzerland, these companies are playing an important role in China’s vocational education and training system. During the three seminars and panel discussion of this year’s SSEF, business leaders shared their experience of implementing VPET projects in China.  

Lars Eckerlein, General Manager of ABB (China) Ltd., a company in power and automation technologies, said his company had provided scholarships and other funding to students from universities and vocational schools and established the ABB Cup Innovation Contest to encourage innovation and to better support the cultivation of local technology talents. The company has also collaborated with universities and vocational schools on training and technology innovation for a variety of industries. 

Wang Shiping, Sustainable Agriculture Development Manager of Nestlé China, shared the company’s endeavor to provide training to students in China’s dairy sector. According to him, Nestlé China’s Dairy Farming Institute in Heilongjiang Province in the northeast of China had delivered 460 training courses for 21,000 students. In Pu’er, southwest China’s Yunnan Province, Nestlé China has trained over 2,000 suppliers and growers on its quality criteria for coffee beans.  

Nick Cao, an executive from Caran d’Ache, a renowned Swiss brand selling colored pencils, told Beijing Review on the sidelines of the forum that, in his observation, graduates who choose to run art education businesses are not always fully prepared. For this reason, the company provides support such as training and certification to help these art startups get a firm foothold.  

Business leaders have also noticed the need for the vocational education exchange between the two nations.   

Li Dujiang, General Manager of elevator manufacturer Schindler in Shenzhen, south China’s Guangdong Province, said he hopes the specialty of Swiss valuing vocational training will resonate within China. Acknowledging a lot of work needs to be done, Li said one thing that can be done right away, with loosening Covid controls and the opening of borders, is communication and exchange between vocational schools, companies, students and teachers.  

More than 300 guests attended the forum. During the event, a collaboration network, the China-Switzerland Alliance on Vocational Education, was officially launched. The SSEF, started in 2010, takes place every two years in Beijing and is by far the largest economic summit between Switzerland and China.   

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

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