Aspects of post-16 education, particularly with reference to vocational education and training, have acquired a degree of common presentation in the policy making of many national and international organizations in recent years. This paper compares similarities and differences in the rhetoric and reality of policy implementation in Brazil and the UK in post-16 education, particularly Technical and Vocational Education and Training. It finds an increasing alignment between these two very different countries at the levels of both discourse and practice. It argues that this reflects the dominance of international and regional agencies on whom both countries draw in developing policy, and the subsequent dissemination of those agencies' particular assumptions about the relationship between education, skills and economic performance.