OVER the years a lot of time and money has been spent on encouraging adults to take advantage of further education.

Evening classes for hobby skills and people taking exams in languages, science or other subjects they missed out on at school have become an important part of our education system.

Redundancy and retirement has also given many older people the opportunity to go back to the classroom and get back into the world of learning.

With this backcloth, it is a wasteful disgrace that colleges across East Lancashire face axeing such courses because of drastically reduced budgets.

What money there is has been channelled by the government towards 14 to 19-year-olds in a desperate effort to meet promises to improve teenage education levels.

College principals have united to lobby both parliament and the Learning and Skills Council to think again over the proposed cuts which will see thousands of places across the area disappear.

So much for education, education, education' and the idea of equal access to learning for all.

These plans represent nothing less than throwing one generation into the educational dustbin in order to finance the schooling of another.