International Summer School on Educational Finance

The International Summer School on Educational Finance was held on July 3-10 in Beijing. The event was organized by HSE Institute of Education and the China Institute for Educational Finance Research, Peking University (CIEFR). Questions of educational financing were considered in the context of globalization and assessing students’ educational achievements.

Olga Romanova, IOE Research Assistant, and Alexey Shabalin, IOE Analyst, presented their reports and projects at the session on vocational education.

Olga Romanova’s report was dedicated to the use of tools for assessing individual achievements in analysing the correlation between demand and supply for skills and competences on Russia’s labour market.

Alexey Shabalin’s presentation was focused on identifying the main problems in skill formation in the 21st century and on a comparative study of Russian and Chinese policy in vocational education. His report preceded a joint seminar by Chinese, American and Russian researchers on a comparative study of public and private partnership in vocational education.

Fedor Dudyrev, IOE Chief Expert, held a workshop on ‘Public-Private Partnerships in VET Reform’, during which the participants discussed the following topics: ‘Business-Government Cooperation in VET: A Russian Experiment with Dual Education’; ‘Vocational Education Reform Through Public-Private Partnerships: Russia’s Case’; ‘Public Private Partnership in Education: China's Experience’; ‘PPP in China's Regions; Why do Cities run Prefecture Vocational Colleges?’; ‘Mixed ownership and the dataset on VET Partnership’. The participants also looked at the common problems in secondary education faced by Russia, China and other countries.

The Beijing summer school is a good example of experience exchange with international colleagues specializing in research into vocational education. After discussions and meetings, the participants agreed a joint comparative study of best practice in implementing private-public partnerships in secondary vocational education in both Russia and China. The project group focuses on determining most successful examples of interaction between businesses and state authorities in creating an effective system of vocational education in Russia’s regions and China’s prefectures in order to support their further development.