Senior middle school is a middle school with full-time ordinary middle school as the main body, as well as secondary vocational schools, secondary specialized schools, secondary normal schools, secondary technical schools, vocational secondary schools, adult secondary schools, vocational high schools and adult high schools.

Secondary specialized schools and secondary normal schools are professional education, enrolling junior high school or senior high school graduates, with a school system of 3 -4 years, which mainly trains middle-level professionals and middle-level management talents. Professional settings include engineering, agriculture and forestry, medicine, health, finance and economics, management, politics and law, art, normal education, sports, tourism and so on.

The educational system of secondary professional education originated from the Soviet Union, and it is mainly industrial. From the early 1980s to the early 1990s, when China was in great need of talents, it trained a large number of professional "pillars".

Classification of academic education

1. Basic education: primary school, junior high school and senior high school (senior secondary education);

2. Vocational education: technical schools, vocational technical schools, vocational middle schools, vocational high schools, higher vocational schools (including vocational colleges) and technician colleges provide the educated with the education of professional knowledge, skills and professional ethics necessary for engaging in a certain occupation or productive labor.

3. Professional education: secondary specialized schools, secondary normal schools, junior colleges and undergraduate courses receive education based on their professional knowledge. Admission requires unified recruitment, and graduation requires dispatch cards (now called registration cards).

4. Postgraduate education: Master students, doctoral students. Scientific research is the main direction.