Abstract :
In the face of worldwide competition for markets in virtually every engineering discipline, UK manufacturing industry and engineering has long acknowledged the need for ever greater levels of skill in its workforce. Politicians, captains of industry, trades union leaders and the great and the good have all entered the arena to promote a world-beating Britain through the benefits of better training. The ´T´ word has become a potent force in the political lexicon, brought into recent sharp focus in national political debate, but is seldom accompanied in the same breath by ´cost´, ´budget´, or even ´value´.<>
