A comparative study of vocational education and occupational safety and health training in China and the UK

Abstract

In order to enhance Chinese workers’ occupational safety awareness, it is essential to learn from developed countries’ experiences. This article investigates thoroughly occupational safety and health (OSH) in China and the UK; moreover, the article performs a comparison of Chinese and British OSH training-related laws, regulations and education system. The following conclusions are drawn: China’s work safety continues to improve, but there is still a large gap compared with the UK. In China a relatively complete vocational education and training (VET) system has been established. However, there exist some defects in OSH. In the UK, the employer will not only pay attention to employees’ physiological health, but also to their mental health. The UK’s VET is characterized by classification and grading management, which helps integrate OSH into the whole education system. China can learn from the UK in the development of policies, VET and OSH training.

Keywords:

• work safety status
• vocational education and training
• safety and health training
• education system

Acknowledgements

This article draws on the work the authors undertook as part of the EU–China Project on Occupational Health and Safety in High Risk Sectors. The authors benefitted from discussions with the other researchers involved in that project. The authors thank Dr Jeff Bridgford, who works at King’s College London, for providing the UK data. This article contains public-sector information published by the Health and Safety Executive and licensed under the Open Government Licence.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Xin Huang http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0497-6345

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [2009kz03].