This article explores the emergence of enterprise education in Australian schooling during the late 1990s. It investigates links between the rhetoric of enterprise culture, policy development in vocational education, and the broader social terrain. Speci®cally, it scrutinises claims about the restorative potential of enterprise education as
new vocational learning for the reinvigoration of work education in schools. The link between Key Competencies and enterprise education as related policy initiatives for vocational education is explored. Further, the discursive implications of new metaphors for teaching and learning associated with enterprise education and their likely impact on
teachers’ work is discussed. The article concludes with an outline for a cultural studies focus in work education for schools