Alongside a historical analysis of vocational education and training this paper examines the development of teacher education and the professional development of vocational and technical teachers in the UK contrasting it to other European countries. In making the comparison I shall show that unlike other European countries the UK makes no distinction in the teacher education between vocational, technical or general education teachers. I shall also argue that the professional development of teachers in further, vocational or technical education has been a history of 'benign neglect', with both the state and teachers themselves assuming that vocational or subject expertise was a sufficient qualification to teach in FE colleges (Robson 1998). This legacy has produced a culture where many teachers' identity was primarily tied to their expertise, resulting in diverse and fragmented professional practices with the vocational teacher remaining isolated within their specialism with no sense of collective professional values and standards (Avis et al 2001).The paper will show that although efforts were made in the UK to regulate and fund teacher education programmes in the 1980s, unlike other counties there is still no statutory minimum entry qualifications or agreed common content for initial teacher education programmes. I conclude however, that recently government has established national standards and introduced compulsory teacher qualifications for all new FE college teachers. I argued that this stands in stark contrast to the past neglect and represents the first national attempt in the UK to regulate the professional practice of FE college teachers. Although the regulations and standards do not yet extend to vocational and technical teachers outside of the FE college sector there are some optimistic suggestions that through new strategic bodies standards and professional qualifications will apply to all vocational and technical teachers whether in the workplace, community or FE college. The movement from the neglect of vocational and technical teachers to one of regulation and professionalisation has just begun in the UK and it remains problematic. Not only because of the ad hoc nature of FE teacher education programmes but also applying national regulations to a sector that has such a diversity of provision, casualisation and lack of professional identity. There is little doubt that contemporary UK government documents on education and training do put a new refreshing emphasis on vocational education and training and that their are proposals before the UK parliament that contains new provisions which would allow the requirements for new teachers in further education colleges to be teacher qualified to extend to all teachers and trainers in what ever context. These developments represent a profound break with the past neglect of teachers and learners in vocational education and training yet are quite different from any other European strategy. Finally, the paper will discuss the significance of these recent policy changes using David Raffe's (1994) theoretical concept of 'intrinsic' and 'institutional' logics to distinguish between the intention of policy makers in introducing these changes and the likely unintended consequences of the policy because wider contextual factors have not been taken into account.