Tang Jiangpeng is a national political adviser and the principal of Jiangsu Xishan Senior High School in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. [Photo/Wuxi Daily]

Tang Jiangpeng, a national political adviser and the principal of Jiangsu Xishan Senior High School, proposed during this year's two sessions that engineering education should be provided to students as early as their senior high school years to train more competent engineers.

China's universities have been focusing on improving their engineering education over the past few years and the country now leads the world in terms of engineering students, said Tang. However, data shows that China still has fewer highly qualified engineers compared with many countries.

According to the principal, this is because the universities pay more attention to traditional fields rather than the emerging sectors such as intelligent manufacturing, aviation and aerospace, and ocean exploration. In addition, most Chinese senior high school students do not receive much engineering education and have little interest or ability in related topics.

Technological classes only account for 7 percent of compulsory courses in senior high schools and there are generally no professional facilities for engineering education on campuses, said Tang.

To deal with the issue, more efforts should be made to research and design engineering education courses and textbooks, while colleges and senior high schools should also work together and establish a mechanism to educate professional engineers, said the political advisor. These efforts, he added, would help improve students' innovation abilities significantly.