Introduction Competence development is of great importance in training and development (or rather: Human Resource Development - HRD) in organisations and lately receiving a lot of attention internationally. More and more the competence development of employees is seen as one of the core businesses of an organization. Learning and working can not be seen as separated activities. Besides knowledge, personal and social competencies are also becoming increasingly important (Descy & Tessaring, 2001). These competencies can not be acquired in a traditional, scholastic environment alone. In all European countries the vast majority of schools fail to prepare young professionals adequately for their careers and also to take advantage of continuing training and development provision (McIntosh & Steedman, 1999). In the project Competence based Green (agricultural) Education (CGE) effort is made to describe a kind of model for competence based education and best practices of the implementation of competence based education. Research design The CGE project was a result of the notice that there is still a lot of indistinctness about the definition and the implementation of competence based education in agricultural education. In an extensive (inter)national literature review a first tentative framework of competence based education was designed. In the follow up of the project empirical data were collected. In two agricultural schools the introduction, design and implementation phase of competence based education was monitored and necessarily accompanied with additional educational research. In the first pilot it concerned the introduction, design and implementation of competence based learning for agricultural enterprise and entrepreneurship. The second pilot concerns the introduction and implementation of competence based education in the complete curriculum. Both education programmes are running for some while and the first opportunities and threats with regard to the implementation of competence based education become visible. Until now most experience in using competencies has been in the context of HRD in organisations. Little is known about the opportunities and threats of working with competencies in initial education. In this paper the following research question will be leading: do opportunities and threats experienced while working with competencies in HRD in organisations match the advantages and problems in working with competencies in initial education? Mulder (2001) describes in his study of more than 800 (inter)national organisations the opportunities and threats of working with competencies in larger organisations. Some of the described opportunities and threats are in this paper compared with the experiences gained in the two described empirical cases. Although the context differs, both cases concern the acquisition of competencies of competencies of (apprentice) professionals to be able to carry out their job in a constantly changing environment. Results According to Mulder (2001) one of the major threats of working with competencies in organisations is that competence orientated HRD has especially added value in the stage of defining the goals and objectives for training and development and in the control stage, where the output of the HRD process is measured. During the HRD activities working with competencies does not play a strong role, although the added value of working with competencies can be the highest in this stage, according to Mulder. Throughout the implementation in the pilot schools it appeared that working with competencies almost directly lead to several changes in the organisation of the learning process. Working with competence based goals and objectives appeared to be no problem. However, designing and developing the learning activities in a competence based way proved to be very difficult. Is there still space for traditionally oriented learning activities or do students only have to learn in an active and more constructive way? Teachers will have to work in multi- disciplinary teams and design (new) competence orientated learning activities making use of the existing activities e.g. practical periods and on the job training. The process of translating competence based goals and objectives to actual learning activities is crucial for the implementation of competence based education. If the implementation of competence based education is only limited to the phase of defining the goals and objectives and in the control phase, the introduction of competence based education fails. In the full paper more opportunities and threats from competencies in HRD described by Mulder (2001) will be compared with the empirical findings from the CGE project and discussed in full detail. LiteratureDescy, P & M. Tessaring (2001). Training and learning for Competence. Second report on vocational training research in Europe. Luxembourg: Office for official Publications of the European Communities. Vol. 1. McIntosh, S. & H. Steedman (1999). Low skills: a problem for Europe. New skills programme of research. Luxembourg: European Commission. Available from the internet: http://improving- ser.sti.jrc.it/default/page.gx?_app.page=entity.html&_app .action=entity&_entity.object=TSER---- 00000000000005C5&_entity.name=ReportMulder, M. (2001). Competence development - Some background thoughts. The journal of agricultural education and extension 7, 4, 147-158.