An evaluation was conducted of the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI), a program that aims to improve the skills of young people in Scotland to enable them to be effective, enterprising, and capable at work. The evaluation looked at the extent to which TVEI had enhanced the acquisition of certain key skills (communicating, working individually and in teams, solving problems, taking responsibility, being enterprising, and using modern technology) and any approaches that had been successful in promoting the development of these skills in young people. Information was gathered through surveys of staff and pupils in higher and further education and of employers and through case studies. The study found that oral communication was the one skill valued by all groups and that this skill was widely thought to have improved in recent years, although only a quarter of pupils found oral communication to be very easy. The study also found that the different groups had different expectations of school leavers and concluded that teachers should be aware of these expectations. Pupils named a range of subjects that they thought were helpful in developing the TVEI skills, and they preferred to learn by doing the same work as others but at their own pace. Work experience was also accepted by pupils and staff as providing opportunities to practice skills. The study also found differences between what teachers thought they should be teaching and what they were actually teaching. Schools in the case studies used both whole-school approaches and specific skills-based courses to help pupils to acquire and practice the TVEI skills. (KC)