Vocational education refers to the educational activities carried out to enable the educated to have the professional ethics, professional knowledge, technical skills and abilities needed to engage in a certain occupation or career development, including vocational school education at all levels and various forms of vocational training.

Vocational education and general education are two different types of education, which have the same important position. Vocational education in a broad sense includes vocational school education and vocational training. What we usually call vocational education is a narrow concept, namely school vocational education. Vocational school education is an important type of school education system.

Academic education is divided into secondary and higher vocational education. Secondary vocational school education is an important part of secondary education, which is implemented by secondary vocational schools; Higher vocational school education is an important part of higher education, which is implemented by vocational colleges and other ordinary colleges and universities at the junior college and undergraduate level. Qualified technician colleges, after examination and approval according to law, can be set as vocational colleges at the corresponding level, while retaining the name and function of technician colleges.

Vocational training is aimed at students and all members of society, including pre-job training, professional training, apprenticeship training, on-the-job training, job transfer training and other vocational training, which can be divided into primary, intermediate and advanced vocational training according to the situation.