The 2023 Jiangsu Vocational Students Skills Competition is taking place in East China's Jiangsu province. [Photo/ourjiangsu.com]

The 2023 Jiangsu Vocational Students Skills Competition organized by 16 departments, including the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education and the Jiangsu Development and Reform Commission, kicked off on Feb 15.

The competition has two categories for secondary vocational schools and vocational colleges. The secondary vocational school category has 56 events that run from Feb 15 to 28, while the vocational college category has 59 events that run from Feb 27 to March 23.

According to Zhang Duo from the office of the competition, most of the events also have a category for teachers. This is aimed at boosting teachers' professional development, said Zhang. More than 11,500 teachers and students are participating in the competition.

Participants attend a virtual reality related competition. [Photo/ourjiangsu.com]

The first event of the competition for secondary vocational school students was related to virtual reality. Forty teams of students and 33 teams of teachers attended the event, which was held at the Nanjing Xuanwu Secondary Vocational School.

Xu Raoshan, leader of the event's expert panel and dean of the Institute of Digital Art of Nanjing College of Information Technology, said virtual reality is a technology widely used in daily life and industries. Graduates majoring in VR are currently in short supply and should focus on improving their art and computer skills, said Xu.