Twenty years since educational reforms were implemented in Spain aiming at the modernisation of the vocational education system and at the improvement of its educational and developmental functions, relationships between education and industry have not been widely analysed. This study reviews the recent international literature on the topic and then looks at one advanced regional case within the school-based, Spanish vocational education context. Analysing data from a sample of 330 industrial firms from the Basque Country, binary logistic regression was applied in order to identify factors especially associated to the fact that SMEs have a greater or lower number of collaboration relations with vocational schools. We also examined the variables that have the greatest impact on whether firms assess vocational schools positively. Results indicate a strong association between intensity of relationships and positive assessment of vocational schools' educational and developmental functions.