PUBS have taken a real hammering in the past decade.

As lives get busier and money gets tighter the number of people popping into their local for a pint or two has dropped drastically.

The traditional big factory employers have disappeared and with them the corner pubs where workers would pile in for a drink on their way home and compete in works’ darts or dominoes teams.

Even pub quiz leagues are nothing like as popular as they were five or more years ago.

The increasing price of booze, the social stigma (rightly) now associated with drinking and the smoking ban have all meant more and more folk drinking at home.

The result is that it’s become extremely difficult to make boozers work as a business unless they are transformed into more upmarket gastro pubs where customers are coming for the food rather than company and a chat.

In this fast-moving age of instant electronic communication people need added value if they are going to be tempted to drop into a bar – an extra attraction. The idea of sitting in a virtually empty, and often shabby, public bar is just not an attractive proposition.

But Erica Dobie and Adam Whittaker might have the answer to this dilemma. They are running a project called Stars and Stuff which has just been awarded a £24,000 grant by the Adult and Community Practical Learning Fund to deliver practical astronomy education in Darwen to adults and families ‘disengaged from traditional science institutions such as museums and universities.’ The idea is that they will deliver a nine-month course in a place where people feel comfortable and relaxed – like a pub.

It’s a great idea and one which could easily spread.

Why spend a fortune throwing up expensive new ‘community resource centres’ and the like when we already have a network of pubs just waiting to be used.

You could have all sorts of activities from learning foreign languages like Spanish, to flower arranging, English literature and drama taking place in bars – not to mention wine appreciation classes!

Many pubs also have outside space too which could be used for teaching practical skills – and tidying them up too.

Yes, getting people to the pub to gaze at the wonders of the universe instead of into a pint glass could be the start of an educational revolution.