The Full Form of VHSE is‍ Vocational Higher Secondary Education.

Secondary vocational education is provided primarily through three types of public high schools: (1) comprehensive high schools (the typical U.S. high school); (2) area vocational schools (regional facilities that students attend part of a day to receive their occupational training); and (3) full-time vocational high schools (schools that offer academic studies but focus on preparing students for work in a particular occupation or industry).(5) The latter two types are referred to collectively as vocational schools. The National Assessment of Vocational Education (NAVE) recently found that most secondary vocational education is provided in comprehensive high schools, with vocational schools enrolling about 10 percent of secondary students and accounting for about 12 percent of vocational coursetaking.(6) Because of the limited capacity of available datasets to provide information on the three types of schools, this publication generally treats secondary vocational education as a single system.

While occupationally specific courses are organized into program areas, high school students typically do not formally enroll in an occupational program. Instead, they may take one or more courses in a single occupational program, or courses scattered throughout the occupationally specific curriculum. Moreover, while the majority of students take occupational courses during their high school careers, they do so for a variety of reasons.(8) Some students take introductory business or technical and communications courses to gain hands-on computer experience, whereas others are required by their high schools to complete a vocational course in order to graduate. Only a minority of students complete a coherent sequence of courses preparing them for employment in a specific occupational field.(9) Indeed, the sequence of courses defining an occupational program varies among high schools and school districts across the country.