From February 15 to 24, 2026, Yang Ping, Chair of the Board, and Yang Jie, President of Xinyang Shengye International Education Group (Maple Leaf College), led a core team to France and the United Kingdom for a 10-day high-end international education study tour and cooperation negotiations. The delegation visited top French universities and the UNESCO headquarters, connected with world-renowned institutions including Cambridge University, Oxford University, and University College London (UCL), engaged with multinational enterprises and Chinese community organizations, and finalized a series of significant cooperation agreements covering planned joint enrollment, China-France/China-UK industry schools, AI-empowered vocational education, and specialized-to-undergraduate-to-master's articulation programs, injecting strong momentum into the internationalization of vocational education.
· Deep China-France Collaboration Anchors Three Pathways for Vocational Education Innovation
During the study tour in France, the Group delegation first held specialized consultations with Albert School (Mines Paris - PSL), reaching high consensus on the internationalization of vocational education, industry-education integration, and AI technology empowerment, and jointly established three pragmatic cooperation pathways to solidify the foundation for China-France vocational education cooperation.
First, advancing planned enrollment joint training: adopting the "3+0" cooperative education model where students complete three years of study domestically with quality faculty dispatched by the French side for instruction, enabling graduates to obtain French nationally recognized bachelor's degrees and opening direct pathways for international academic advancement. Second, co-establishing a China-France Industry School: integrating advanced French vocational education concepts, collaborating with French enterprises in China to develop curricula, provide customized training, and ensure closed-loop employment, precisely delivering high-quality technical and skilled talent. Third, deepening specialized cooperation in AI: focusing on data analysis, AI commercial applications, and intelligent agent teaching, jointly developing courses, conducting collaborative research, and building an internationally recognized micro-credential system to empower high-quality vocational education development through digital technology.
After finalizing the core cooperation framework, the delegation further conducted in-depth discussions with authoritative experts from Sorbonne University. The Director of LIP6 Laboratory and authoritative scholars from the European Association for Artificial Intelligence respectively shared research systems and cutting-edge achievements in AI ethics. Both sides reached consensus on curriculum co-development, scientific research cooperation, and faculty-student exchanges, building an important bridge for China-France educational and scientific research cooperation and extending China-France vocational education cooperation to deeper levels and broader areas.
Additionally, the delegation made a special visit to the UNESCO headquarters to study the international cooperation framework for global education, science, and culture, precisely aligning with international education standards, building higher-level and broader cooperation platforms for the Group's internationalized education, and ensuring that educational directions resonate with global education development.
· Study Tours at Prestigious UK Institutions Build Multi-Level Cooperation Bridges
During the study tour in the United Kingdom, the delegation successively entered world-class institutions including Cambridge University, Oxford University, and University College London (UCL), immersively learning classic educational models such as the collegiate system, tutorial system, and industry-academia-research transformation. They discovered that the educational philosophies of Cambridge and Oxford highly align with Maple Leaf College's positioning of "student-centered, practice-oriented, employment-focused" education, laying an ideological foundation for subsequent cooperation.
The Group reached substantive cooperation with Oxford Brookes University, focusing on advantageous programs including mechanical engineering, health care, computer science, and digital technology, advancing joint program development, credit transfer recognition, and faculty exchanges, building a smooth specialized-to-undergraduate articulation framework and broadening students' international academic advancement pathways.
As the college's faculty team continues to expand, the college actively promotes two-way exchange and mutual learning, opening learning channels to UK universities and welcoming British university students to the college for half-year exchange study programs with mutual credit recognition, promoting cross-national young students to study and research together. Simultaneously, the college officially opened faculty professional development channels with Oxford University and Cambridge University, establishing normalized training mechanisms to regularly select backbone faculty for visiting scholar programs and teaching research at Oxford and Cambridge, comprehensively enhancing the faculty team's international teaching and research capabilities.
Simultaneously, the Group reached milestone cooperation with University College London (UCL) and the Association of British Chinese Professors (ABCP), jointly preparing to establish the China-UK Higher Education Cooperation Alliance, clarifying six major cooperation areas, and implementing "3+1" and "4+0" undergraduate cooperation models to further integrate top UK educational resources and enhance the quality of the school's talent cultivation.
The delegation also visited the UK operation headquarters of Tsinghua University TusPark and the UK headquarters of HSBC Bank, successfully opening cross-border collaborative channels for "education plus technology plus finance," providing solid funding and resource guarantees for the Group's international project cooperation and university acquisition layout, and safeguarding the implementation of internationalization strategies.
· Cultural Exchange Empowers and Consolidates the Foundation of International Cooperation
During the study tour in the United Kingdom, Chair Yang Ping and her delegation were invited to attend the 2026 London Chinatown Chinese Association's "Spring Festival Celebration Across the Four Seas" Chinese New Year celebration, joining British government representatives, overseas Chinese leaders, and hundreds of thousands of people in celebrating the Spring Festival. This event is one of the most influential Chinese cultural activities in the UK, demonstrating the overseas charm of traditional Chinese culture while building a bridge for China-UK people-to-people exchanges for the Group, narrowing emotional distances between China and foreign countries, and cultivating public support foundations for subsequent educational and cultural cooperation.
· Returning with Honors to Discuss Development, Wholeheartedly Moving Toward the Future
After successfully completing the France-UK study tour mission and returning to China, Chair Yang Ping and her delegation, without taking any rest and disregarding travel fatigue, immediately organized and convened a college-wide meeting to share in detail with all faculty and staff what they saw, gained, and achieved during the France-UK trip, conveying cutting-edge information and development ideas for international education cooperation.
Chair Yang Ping pointed out that this France-UK study tour was a crucial step in the Group and College's internationalization strategy. Through deep connections with French national universities and UK G5 elite institutions, the Group and College's international influence has been significantly enhanced, successfully building a cooperation network covering Europe and connecting with world-class educational resources, providing students with international academic advancement pathways from specialized to undergraduate to master's levels, and introducing global quality resources for program development and faculty cultivation.
She emphasized that the most profound feeling from this visit was that China's development speed has attracted worldwide attention. The continuous enhancement of comprehensive national strength, the vigorous momentum of industrial upgrading, and the rapid development of the digital economy have not only injected strong momentum into the development of China's vocational education but also provided broad space and solid confidence for international education cooperation. The continuous improvement of international recognition for Chinese vocational education is backed by solid national development support and represents a significant advantage of the development path with Chinese characteristics. The Group will take this cooperation as an opportunity to adhere to industry-education integration, international alignment, and skills-based education, accelerate the implementation of planned enrollment, China-foreign industry schools, AI-empowered vocational education, and other projects, transforming world-class educational concepts, teaching standards, and training models into actual effectiveness for Group and College development, cultivating more high-quality technical and skilled talent with international vision and familiarity with international rules, and contributing to regional economic development and national education opening-up.
