The “One-Way Student Flow” in General-Vocational Education Integration in Chinese Secondary Education

The general-vocational education integration (GVEI) is an initiative of strategic significance for Chinese educational reform in the new era, aiming to integrate general and vocational education resources to provide more diverse educational options for students and cultivate high-quality technical talent. Nevertheless, the GVEI at the secondary level encounters the challenge of “one-way student flow,” a strong bias towards vocational-to-general transition in vocational education students. The issue is a severe deviation from the original objective of developing GVEI. This article focuses on delineating the phenomenon and pinpointing the causes underlying it, with a view to providing implications for the successful implementation and advancement of GVEI.