The editors charged contributors to examine individual aspects of policy and practice considering, inter alia, three sub-themes. The first is the competence-based approach and its implementation; the second is an exploration of who are the winners and losers as government has placed national economic development at the heart of its policies and programmers for education and training. A third theme is the process of change and intervention itself. While apparent in all the chapters, it is most easily traced in the case studies where policies initiated at national level by government and other bodies are modified by factors in the local context and are implemented in ways which are acceptable to individual organizations. The New Training Initiative made competence-based qualifications a key component of its agenda for improving Britain's VET performance. This has now emerged as the pervasive influence on both VET policy and practice and, features with different degrees of optimism and unease in several chapters.