As elsewhere, vocational education and training (VET) has a poor image in Hong Kong. To remove the stigma, the Vocational Training Council of Hong Kong embarked on pro-active strategic planning to make it more relevant and cost-effective, exposed long and widely held myths that VET is for dullards which leads only to low-paid and low-status jobs, provided a through-train education system to ensure that VET is no longer an educational cul-de-sac, and sought external accreditation aggressively. Though it is early days, there is strong evidence that these strategies have worked. [Copyright of Journal of Education and Work is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13639080801957246]