This report reflects our ongoing collaborative research and action engagements in education. Three overlapping interests are at the centre of our inquiry: (a) the relationship between education and work; (b) the transformation of small towns in Maharashtra and the changing role of education therein; and (c) vocational and skill-based programmes in small towns. Anchored in the south-western town of Sangli, Maharashtra, our work focuses on various institutional arrangements in vocational and skill-based education. By mapping the educational landscape, the report also highlights the experiences of students who traverse the domains of work and education. Scholars of diverse disciplinary persuasions have pointed out the intensification of economic and social changes that have occurred since the late 1980s in India. Driven by the imperatives of the global economy, economic liberalisation severely affected a number of domestic sectors. Agriculture and related sectors saw large-scale movement of labour towards non-agrarian livelihoods that also resulted in a consistent increase in short-term, circuitous and at times long-term migration to urban and semi-urban locales. Similarly, there have also been significant shifts that have occurred in education over the course of the past three decades, propelling a change in the social, cultural and economic realms. The desire and demand for quality education has become apparent, while state provisioning of education has gone down and privatisation has occurred at a fast pace.