The article underlines the historic importance of the treatment of skills development, finally, by the Education for All Global Monitoring Report (GMR) team. Among the many challenges in its analysis are the multiple and overlapping meanings of the word skill, and the consequent difficulties of quantifying and monitoring efforts at skills development. The positioning of skills development within secondary education is a further area of huge diversity and contestation. Beyond this, the claimed relationships between skills and growth require careful teasing out. As important as any, however, are the relations amongst skills, work, and employment (and unemployment) in both the urban and rural informal sectors. The article argues that although GMR 2012 breaks a great deal of new ground in addressing skills development, it ends up being rather a school-based account of skill; very little attention is given to post-school skills development in the further education and training colleges of many societies. Equally, it underplays the impact of the wider macroeconomic environment on skills development. Finally, the article suggests that much can be learned from Asia, as well as for Asia, in this crucial world of skills development.