Since the 1990s, reform schools have boldly reformed their school-running forms, and implemented on-campus reform trusteeship education and off-campus reform preparatory education. The combination of vocational high school education and academic system has achieved remarkable results and fundamentally changed people's doubts about work-study education. Reform-school has changed from a simple correction center for illegal, minor criminal acts and abnormal behaviors to a special education institution that is included in the general education series, connected with and serves general education, and has gradually become a prevention center, correction center and research center for illegal and criminal acts.

A special school for minors who have committed illegal or minor crimes. Work-study school is not only an integral part of the whole education, but also an important institution to educate and save the young people who have lost their feet. Under the leadership of the Party Committee, it is jointly organized by the education department, the Communist Youth League and the public security department. The education targets are generally middle school students and social school-age teenagers who have violated the law or committed minor crimes at the age of 13- 17 and are not suitable for studying in the original school, but are not suitable for reeducation through labor or sentencing. Their admission must be approved by the local district and county education departments and the public security bureau. The academic system is generally two to three years. In addition to cultural education, vocational and technical education and ideological and political education, students at school also organize necessary productive labor according to their age, implement work-study programs, and implement strict management and reward and punishment systems. After graduation, the students in the work-study school are sent back to their original schools according to their own conditions, or transferred to continue their studies, or joined the army, or found jobs. There is no political discrimination.