The Chinese government promotes cooperation between colleges and companies in vocational education to improve the supply of skilled workers and increase labour productivity. This study employs the concept of positive coordination – negotiations concurrently addressing productive and distributive questions – to analyse the advantages and limitations of voluntary cooperation embedded in networks. In terms of production, many projects focus on updating, narrowing and deepening curricula to lower the costs of initial training borne by companies and the risk of labour turnover. In terms of distribution, however, the deep and narrow curricula are at odds with students’ preference for general and transferable skills; and the mutual commitments of both companies and students are uncertain. The solutions provided by cooperation are partial and unstable. Overall, they reduce skill mismatches but cannot control turnover or overcome market failure, which undermines tertiary vocational education's contribution to labour productivity.

China's need for skilled workers to upgrade its industrial system is increasingly urgent due to global economic competition. Despite massive expansion of its Vocational Education and Training system over the past two decades, a significant skilled labour deficit remains. Current debates on the inefficacy of vocational education focuses on the lack of institutional synergies between education and industry but often overlooks the inherent conflicts within the vocational education system and micro-level skill formation processes. Our ethnographic research in two upper-secondary vocational schools unveils a disturbing trend: the rapid massification of vocational education, which prioritizes student enrolment numbers over educational quality, fails to address the demand for skill formation and skilled labour. It inadvertently generates adverse consequences for both administrative management and classroom instruction. Skill development frequently falls to after-school professional associations and an exclusive group of elite students. Meanwhile, reform initiatives, such as the craftsmanship campaign and skill competitions, benefit only a few without improving the employment prospects for the wider student population. These findings call for greater attention to the inherent tensions within China's Vocational Education and Training system. Only when there is a deeper understanding of the underlying causes of ineffective skill formation in vocational schools can China achieve its national goal of industrial upgrades.

This article reviews the arguments and evidence on the role and contribution of the vocationally trained workforce and vocational training system in technical innovation. The primary focus in terms of the vocational workforce is on skilled production workers and, in particular, tradespersons and technicians. These occupations and the vocational training system are found to have a unique role and make a significant contribution to innovation in both production and Research and Development (R&D). The primary role of the VET system in innovation is technology diffusion. However, there are a number of impediments to achieving this role. These are sustained budget cuts and exclusion of the VET system from national innovation policy, programmes and advisory structures. The latter is attributed largely to the failure of the innovation studies discipline, which has strongly influenced government policy in this field, to study in detail the role of VET occupations and training system in the innovation process. This conclusion is paradoxical as the discipline’s own analysis of innovation makes a compelling case that these occupations and training system should be central agents in this process.

The Latin American model of vocational education has been widely portrayed as a homegrown success story, particularly by scholars and stakeholders who are aware of the region’s skill deficits, wary of alien solutions, and suspicious of institutional transfers more generally. Is the Latin American model really homegrown? I use a combination of qualitative and quantitative data to trace the model’s mores and methods not to the New World but to Central Europe and go on to identify three different transmission paths in the 20th century: imitation by Latin Americans of German origin, descent, and/or training in the run-up to World War II; propagation by West German attachés and advisors in an effort to rehabilitate their country’s image in the wake of the war; and adaptation by local employers and policymakers—who received additional support from Germany—at the turn of the last century. The results suggest that institutional importation is less a discrete event or outcome to be avoided than an ongoing process that, first, entails translation, adaptation, and at times obfuscation by importers as well as exporters; and, second, is facilitated by immigrants, their descendants, and diplomats in transnational contact zones.

Since the 1990s, the Chinese party-state has attempted to teach its youth how to think and speak about the nation through a “patriotic education” campaign waged in schools, the media and on public sites. The reception of these messages by youth of different social backgrounds remains a disputed issue, however. Drawing on a multi-sited field study conducted among rural and urban Han Chinese youth attending different types of schools, this article explores the effects of the patriotic education campaign on youth conceptions of the nation by examining the rhetoric high-school students employ when asked to reflect upon their nation. The study reveals that a majority of youth statements conform to the language and contents of the patriotic education campaign; however, there are significant differences in the discursive stances of urban youth and rural youth and of those attending academic and non-academic, vocational schools. These findings call into question the party-state's current vision of China as a “unified” national collectivity. They highlight the existence of variances in the sense of collective belonging and national identity of Chinese youth, while underscoring the importance of social positioning and perceived life chances in producing these variances.

Tony Simmonds describes the initiatives taken at the College of Law to assist students to perform effective practical legal research including a Legal Method foundation course; a vocational course for the Legal Practice Course and additional in house learning activities devised by the information professionals.

The Bar Vocational Course, which all potential barristers must complete, emphasises the importance of legal research skills. Mark Haines from BPP College outlines its current structure and heralds the arrival of the new Bar Professional Training Course