Abstract: After years of development, the vocational education of gemmology in west Yunnan has cultivated a large number of professional talents, but there are still some problems, such as the relative lack of high-level talent training, insufficient investment in teaching hardware, insufficient professionalism of students, shortage and insufficient internal motivation of teachers and the lack of in-depth integration of west Yunnan ethnic culture in educational activities. From the perspective of assisting industrial development, this article investigates the situation of the gem and jade industry and vocational education in west Yunnan, and proposes several strategies including: establishing a multi-subject cooperative training mechanism, strengthening the construction of the hardware of gemmology vocational colleges through school-enterprise cooperation, building a teacher training system with dual cores of knowledge and skills, integrating the ethnic characteristic culture of west Yunnan into jewelry design and processing major, integrating online certification courses into various professional education steps etc.