The Dutch law on VET has been evaluated in 1999-2000 through eight research projects. Two of those were involved with curricular aspects of VET. Brandsma (2001) evaluated the development of a national qualification structure and Nieuwenhuis, van Berkel, Mulder & Jellema (2001) evaluated the quality of educational supply and assessment by VET colleges. In this paper a comprehensive model will be presented on organizing educational quality for VET, in which the interrelation between institutional, organizational and professional system layers is formalized. To understand the working (and changing) of complex social systems, the distinction between institutions and organizations is essential. Institutions can be defined, in accordance with institutional economics, as the set of common habits, implicit and explicit arrangements, regulations and laws, on which relations and interactions between individuals and groups are built. Institutions are important for the supply of information inside a system, for the reduction of uncertainty, the regulation of conflicts and incentive structures. Organisations, at the other hand, are concrete groups of actors, with specified targets and goals, sometimes based on reified ways of transaction. A socio-economic system can be seen as the interplay between institutions and organisations; so can the VET system. Each country and each economic sector has developed over years its own set of institutions and organisations for VET. Developing quality in VET needs consistent policy on institutional and organizational aspects; legislation at the one hand, and professional teaching in practice at the other hand, should be in line with this policy. Analyzing the impact of new legislation on the quality of educational supply in Dutch VET, inconsistency in policy at these layers is a major explanation of system failures.Defining quality of VET implies making choices out of perspectives. The EC- memorandum (199..) on life long learning stresses the importance of education as starting point for a learning life to enable people to adapt to the uncertain demands of the knowledge based economy (see also Mayer & Nieuwenhuis, 2002). Based on this perspective, attractiveness of VET is the main criterion for educational quality. We define attractiveness as the degree in which VET motivates and prepares young and adult students for life long learning and stimulates choices directed towards socially highly esteemed occupational domains (in fact society needs a fair distribution of graduates over all kinds of economic activities, varying from nursing to technical jobs and entertainment!). Attractiveness relates both to learning processes as well as learning contexts, deals with educational organisation and with re-entry possibilities for early leavers and stresses the perceived relevance of course content. Defined in this way, attractiveness bridges students' interests to societal stakes, including the 'rude' stakes of labour market players. At the same time, attractiveness stresses the need of flexibility in the design of VET-systems and -courses: educational quality is delivered by professional teachers and 'masters', designing tailor-made 'situated learning' (cf. Lave & Wenger, 1991) for a large variety of students and trainees. To realise attractiveness, programme characteristics are the main instruments. This leads to two intermediate criteria for quality in VET: internal and external consistency of courses.§ External consistency refers to the degree in which the relation between input, throughput and output is seen and understand by the students. A high degree of external consistency implies that the (socio-economic) benefits of educational activities and investments are transparent for the students, by which their motivation will increase. Competencies, as output of the educational process, should be perceived logically to the learning process and the goal frame (i.e. qualification structure) upon which students justify their choice for VET. With sophisticated course design (situatedness, transparency, et cetera) vocational colleges, companies and teachers have great impact on external consistency.§ Internal consistency refers to the degree in which several components of educational trajectories are organised coherently. Three main components can be discerned: off- the-job, on-the-job learning and assessment. If these components are not designed consistently, attractiveness is difficult to reach.The qualifications structure defines the institutional context of learning in VET, colleges and companies arrange the conditions to realize external consistency and teachers and masters are responsible for internal consistent trajectories for different groups of students. Brandsma (2001) analyzed the way social partners and educational representatives are building a transparent set of attractive qualifications, students can aim for. Nieuwenhuis c.s. (2001) studied the way colleges, companies and teachers are working on the realization of VET in practice. In the paper the (qualitative and quantitative) results of both studies will be presented within a common framework. Although the paper focusses on the evaluation of the Dutch law on VET, the paper is relevant from a European perspective as well, given the reforms undertaken in VET systems in various European countries that are driven by similar concerns.