Based on case studies of four Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) and an analysis of national developments in training policy, this paper presents a critique of the TEC initiative. The initiative was launched in 1988 to bring innovation and new private sector funding to the British training system. The TECs' manifest failure to deliver a 'skills revolution', it is argued, cannot be blamed on 'external' factors such as the unexpected advent of recession, but instead must be attributed to 'internal' causes. The problems currently faced by TECs - including inadequate funding, short-termism, an inability to stimulate in-company training-stem from the flawed neoliberal thinking on which the initiative was based. Problems of market failure in the training system were never likely to be solved by institutions which aped the market itself. In this sense the failure of TECs has to be seen as a systemic one.
