Enacting sports-education integration in Chinese sports schools: evidence from three schools in Henan Province

China’s sports schools are undergoing critical institutional reform under the national agenda of sports-education integration (ti jiao ronghe). Long positioned within the state-led elite sport system, sports schools are increasingly expected to reconcile elite youth sport training with formal education and broader developmental pathways. Focusing on Henan Province, this study examines how this reform agenda is interpreted and enacted in practice. Drawing on ethnographically informed fieldwork in three sports schools, policy documents, institutional artefacts, and semi-structured interviews with eight provincial officials and school leaders, the study identifies three institutional patterns: policy-driven restructuring, cultural synergy, and resource integration. The findings show that provincial officials understood integration in terms of the institutional conditions required to sustain reform, particularly funding and coordination across administrative systems, whereas school leaders related it more directly to school operation, student recruitment, and students’ future progression. Schools responded to these reform pressures through different institutional patterns shaped by resources, administrative arrangements, local culture, staffing conditions, and recruitment pressures. Across the cases, these patterns expanded or sustained opportunities for education and student development to varying degrees, although competitive performance remained central to institutional evaluation and recognition. Overall, the study suggests that sports-education integration depends not only on school-level adaptation, but also on stronger coordination across governance, funding, staffing, and educational arrangements. It demonstrates how a shared national reform agenda is enacted differently across institutions within China’s state-led elite youth sport system.