This blog article introduces a new policy brief, which is the result of collaboration between the Directorate of Education and Skills, the Centre for Skills and the Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Policy at the OECD, sets out ways in which VET systems have responded to the following challenges (getting informed about the VET offer, getting ready to be able to enter upper secondary programmes, getting into work-based opportunities (especially apprenticeships) and getting on within them — successfully completing programmes — since the middle of the last decade.