As the new autumn semester begins, the newly established Health and Wellness Medicine Department at Xingtai Medical College is showcasing a fresh outlook. The department features well-equipped simulated rehabilitation clinics, along with training rooms for exercise therapy, traditional rehabilitation, and cognitive recovery, with its realistic teaching spaces covering core scenarios of health and wellness services. Aligned with the city's overall plan for the health and wellness industry, the college has been coordinating its specialty development, aiming to cultivate practical talents who can be retained, utilized effectively, and perform well in the field.

Since the beginning of this year, the city has anchored its focus on the development goals of 44 county-level distinctive industrial clusters. Taking the integration of industry and education as its main thread, it has deepened the supply-side structural reform of vocational education. This initiative encourages institutions to actively align with enterprise job standards, production processes, and technical specifications, dynamically adjusting their specialty layouts while keeping pace with industrial transformation. The goal is to ensure a deep connection between professional tracks and industrial chains, and a precise match between the talent pipeline and the innovation chain.

In August, Linxi County signed a strategic school-local cooperation agreement with Hebei University of Science and Technology Engineering, targeting precise gaps in local distinctive industries. This partnership has led to the establishment of a bearing-focused specialty, joint training programs, and high-skilled talent training classes. "The targeted cultivation of technical talent ensures high adaptability, allowing graduates to quickly get up to speed in production roles and effectively alleviating the shortage of frontline technicians in enterprises," said Wang Lei, Production Director of Hebei Yuliang Bearing Group, a partner in this collaboration.

It has been reported that, so far this year, vocational institutions across the city have collectively optimized and adjusted a total of 133 specialties. New program directions have been added in areas such as bearing production and manufacturing technology, as well as the operation and maintenance of new energy equipment, directly connecting with leading industries. Furthermore, 20 secondary vocational schools, including the Xindu District Vocational Education Center, and 17 higher vocational colleges, such as Hebei Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Technology, have collaborated to launch 56 joint training projects. These projects cover fields like computer application technology, new energy vehicle technology, and e-commerce, continuously supplying the industrial frontline with a well-structured and highly competent skilled workforce.

The rapid and effective implementation of these precisely matched school-enterprise collaborations is also attributed to the city's ongoing effort to build a normalized two-way interaction mechanism between schools and enterprises. The Municipal Education Bureau regularly conducts visits to enterprises, investigating frontline labor demands and technical bottlenecks. This facilitates precise matching between academic institutions and corporate technical needs, fosters joint research collaborations, and has led to the resolution of numerous industrial technical challenges through school-enterprise synergy. Consequently, the alignment between talent cultivation and job requirements has been consistently improving.

While offline mechanisms continue to improve, online platforms are also being upgraded in parallel. On the official account of the "Xingtai Economic Development Zone Industry-Education Consortium," recruitment information from companies like Chuangli Electromechanical and Haiyu Lithium Energy is updated in real-time. In 2024, the city's first provincial-level municipal industry-education consortium was inaugurated in the Economic Development Zone. This year, the platform has enhanced its information dissemination functions, simultaneously pushing out college research resources, talent supply, and enterprise labor demands. This guides institutions in conducting customized talent training and technical services.

Building on the precise connection between supply and demand, the city has established a three-tier competition system at the "class-school-city" level, normalizing various contests to promote learning and practice through competition, thereby solidifying students' professional skills. At the city's fourth vocational school skills competition held this year, 53 competition categories covered 26 institutions, with over a thousand teachers and students competing on the same stage. The competition integrated corporate production standards into the event design, providing students with a practical platform to showcase their skills. It also opened a channel for enterprises to reserve high-quality skilled talent in advance, accelerating the release of vitality in "promoting teaching, learning, and integration through competition."

"We will continue to be guided by industrial needs, deepen the integration of industry and education, and strengthen school-enterprise cooperation. We are committed to continuously optimizing the supply of talent cultivation, providing solid human resource and intellectual support for the high-quality development of Xingtai's distinctive industrial clusters," stated Yu Jingli, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Director of the Municipal Education Bureau.