The status and quality of vocational education and training (VET) represent a challenge in many countries, including Norway. In recent decades the political goal in Norway has been to ensure that vocational programmes at upper secondary level achieve equal status with academic programmes. Considerable efforts have been made to strengthen the quality of vocational programmes to achieve this. This article presents an analysis of the challenges of the school-based part of Norwegian VET. The analysis is particularly directed at issues of vocational relevance and coherence between the educational content and the qualification needs of the vocations. The aim is to identify the obstacles to relevance and coherence and show the attempts made to strengthen both quality and status.