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In this paper the author looks at the institutions which underlie effective training systems and compares the way the German system works with the way the British and American systems work. First he reviews the factors which make the German system so effective: (i) powerful employer associations which bring employers together to develop consensus on what type of vocational skills are required by those employers; (ii) cooperative trade unions working with management to ensure that training is taken seriously within enterprises and a good training system develops; (iii)supportive institutional systems outside the vocational training system itself, including a stable system of collective bargaining, incentive structures for German companies which support the employment of apprentices, access by enterprises to long-term finance and young people willing to commit to a relatively circumscribed future with a welfare system supportive of the need to find another job using the same skills. The author then looks at the education and training systems in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA), comparing them with the system in Germany.