This handbook aims at helping policy makers and social partners to look at the issues involved in financing work-based learning programmes--programmes that are part of formal vocational education and training and combine learning in the workplace with learning in the classroom--and to make better choices between the policy options that face them when designing and improving such programmes. Effective financing is a key way to achieve goals such as improved access and quality. Extending and improving work-based learning programmes is central to the European agenda on vocational education. [Stefan Thomas contributed to the writing of this handbook.]