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This paper reports on a project involving an investigation into the factors influencing the participation of technical workers in continuing vocational education, training and learning (CVETL) activities in six countries. The initial findings have suggested that participation in continuing vocational education and training (CVT) is more influenced by individual agency in Portugal, Spain and Greece, whereas structural factors (in terms of forms of provision of CVET and learning) are more influential in Germany, Italy and the UK. This paper focuses upon the comparison of CVETL in case studies of aerospace companies in England and Germany. The data was collected by semi-structured interviews and nonparticipant observation. The German 'case' is a single company, while in the UK because the CVETL for a number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) was organised collaboratively in an aerospace components supply chain learning network the 'case' will be the responses of three SMEs to the challenges of facilitating continuing learning, development and continuous improvement. The project found that the German system could be seen as collaborative at the institutional level (especially between employers) but dependent upon individual commitment for further development of intermediate skills. Whereas institutional collaboration is generally much weaker in the UK, but skill development is more likely to be collaborative at the level of individual workers, as they are more likely to be working in teams and there is less formal structural support.