MIC-IT is ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit from Chi­nese ex­per­tise in the area of tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion, when two of its team leads re­turn from an in­ten­sive two-week train­ing course at the Ning­bo Poly­tech­nic in Ning­bo City, Zhe­jiang Province, Chi­na.

As­sis­tant Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Nathan Lan­gaigne and Plan­ning & Op­er­a­tions Man­ag­er, Tariq Khan are at­tend­ing a Sem­i­nar on Vo­ca­tion­al Ed­u­ca­tion for Prin­ci­pals from No­vem­ber 2-15, 2023.

“Ning­bo Poly­tech­nic is a full-time col­lege en­gaged in high­er vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion ap­proved by Chi­na’s Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in 1999,” MIC-IT says in a re­lease. 

In 2005, the in­sti­tu­tion was rat­ed as the na­tion­al ad­vanced unit of Vo­ca­tion­al Ed­u­ca­tion in Chi­na.

MIC-IT says the sem­i­nar will help it un­der­stand the de­vel­op­ment of Chi­na's vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion, the man­age­ment mode and school-run­ning mode of Chi­na’s vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion, the cur­ricu­lum set­ting and the re­form of vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion. The or­gan­i­sa­tion’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives al­so will learn best prac­tise in terms of stu­dent man­age­ment and prac­tice of vo­ca­tion­al col­leges, the teach­ing man­age­ment of vo­ca­tion­al schools, and the sys­tem de­sign and im­ple­men­ta­tion of pro­fes­sion­al tal­ent train­ing pro­grammes.

“This train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty, which is ful­ly fund­ed by the Peo­ple's Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, comes at a favourable time, as MIC-IT is well on its way to be­ing the first TVET in­sti­tu­tion to launch Luban Work­shops in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” MIC-IT re­vealed. 

The Luban Work­shop is named af­ter Lu Ban, an an­cient Chi­nese wood­craft mas­ter who was born in 507BC dur­ing Chi­na's Zhou dy­nasty and is de­signed to im­prove the pro­fes­sion­al vo­ca­tion­al skills of the lo­cal work­force.

MIC-IT ex­plained: “Stu­dents at the work­shop are taught in a mod­el called 'or­der-form teach­ing', which means that they are trained and equipped with tar­get­ed skills in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the en­ter­pris­es they will work at af­ter grad­u­at­ing. Here, stu­dents are trained in Chi­nese tech­nol­o­gy with Chi­nese stan­dards as part of a full-court press to glob­alise Chi­nese tech­nol­o­gy.”

It added: “The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has been will­ing to lis­ten to host coun­tries in­volved in the Belt & Road Ini­tia­tive and mar­shal plans to trans­fer in­dus­tri­al skills to these economies.”

MIC-IT points out that to date, Chi­na has es­tab­lished Luban Work­shops in 19 coun­tries and re­gions—in­clud­ing Thai­land, the UK, In­dia, In­done­sia, Pak­istan and Africa.

Luban Work­shops are Chi­nese vo­ca­tion­al work­shop pro­grammes that train tal­ent over­seas. They be­come a bridge of friend­ship be­tween Chi­na and for­eign coun­tries in ed­u­ca­tion­al ex­change. The pro­gramme has be­come a "call­ing card" of Chi­na's vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion.