Vince Cable

I am receiving many letters from cross residents who have discovered that their adult college classes are being terminated or have an uncertain future.

Part of the complaint is about communications. I am raising these with the College. More important, however, is the financial squeeze on adult education. The government wants the further education budget to be skewed towards teenagers and towards certain forms of vocational training (so called lever 2 courses).

Governments should, of course, set priorities. But these are short sighted. For thousands of local people the college is a lifeline: mothers with young children, trying to keep their minds active, or acquire new skills, before they return to work; adults who missed out on good schooling or have special needs and are trying to educate themselves; older people with energy and experience who want an active and positive retirement, not being left to vegetate. Adult education saved my own mother form loneliness and depression.

Our local college is popular and provides not just adult learning but a real sense of community. It is deeply dispiriting, to staff and students alike, to see such a valuable institution turned into a production line for people to acquire the right certificates.

I warned in a debate last summer of the threat to adult education from the government's obsession with 'useful' and 'relevant' training (which often becomes obsolete as technology changes). The headlines are dominated instead by an obscure debate amongst politicians and journalists about school governance (I, for one, am mystified). Yet the threat is mostly hidden

It is time to focus on a really big issue: the threat to a proud tradition, going back generations, of self improvement through adult education.