China’s National Centre for Educational Technology (NCET) launched a new project on ‘Upskilling and Certifying the Digital Skills of Chinese Vocational College Students’ at a conference at the Nanjing Vocational College of Information Technology in April. The initiative will help implement the Chinese Ministry of Education’s new vocational education reform policy.

The conference opened with a presentation of the ‘1+X’ policy, which encourages vocational students to graduate with one or more occupational skills-based certifications in addition to their diploma. Mr Han Jun, Deputy Chief Director of NCET highlighted the importance of using certification programmes that are recognised by industry. NCET will recommend ICDL as the first solution for vocational colleges in China.

Representatives of the Nanjing Education Bureau and Nanjing Vocational College of Finance and Economics also shared their experiences with ICDL, including participating in the ICDL Asia Digital Challenge.

The conference was attended by over 500 participants from approximately 290 vocational colleges from around China. The colleges will be able to apply through provincial offices of NCET to implement ICDL in the new academic year in September.

Damien O’Sullivan, CEO of ICDL Foundation, said, “ICDL is truly a global standard and this is achieved by deep implementation locally in every country and market. We now started bringing ICDL into China as a foreign standard, but we are committed to building the programme as locally recognised as possible.  We are certainly looking forward to China joining the ICDL global community and start contributing the unique Chinese experience to the global standard as well.”