Vocational education and training (VET) schemes are called on to help unemployed young people and older workers get jobs, to reduce the burden on higher education, to attract foreign investment, to ensure rapid growth of earnings and employment, to reduce inequality of earnings among other aims. These high expectations have resulted in heavy government involvement in VET but the record has been disappointing. This joint World Bank-International Labour Office (ILO) study looks at the experience of 19 countries in reforming their VET policies and summarises the lessons learned.