Adult Learning: It's never too late to be a star pupil: Even for grown-ups, schooldays can be the best days of your life. Anne Nicholls reports on the success stories of Adult Learners' Week

WHEN the first Adult Learners' Week was launched last year as an experiment to encourage the philosophy of 'learning for life', the Department of Employment was overwhelmed by more than 56,000 telephone calls. There were people who wished to learn languages, women returners who wanted careers, over-65s looking for new challenges, unemployed people keen to retrain and many adults who simply wanted to improve their general level of education.

The experiment was such a success that it looks like becoming an annual event. This year's Adult Learners' Week, which runs until Sunday, focuses on four areas: guidance in education and training, women, adults in the 'new' further-education sector, and learning in later life (to link in with the European Year of Older People).

Locally, colleges and adult education centres are throwing open their doors for advice sessions, exhibitions, taster courses and drop-in sessions. The highlight of the week comes in the regionally organised awards for Outstanding Adult Learner.

This year there is a new award for groups, which was won by the Castleford Women's Centre, set up in the aftermath of the 1984 miners' strike to provide education for men and women in the commmunity. For individual awards, 58 finalists have been selected, with one winner in each of 11 regions in England, Wales and Scotland. Reading their stories of 'triumph over tragedy' is sobering. While the conventional route to employment is to complete your education first, people like Jean Dixon, John Gannon and Treena Southcoat did it all back to front.

Ms Dixon, a 39-year-old school cleaner, literally went back to school to take her O- and A-levels alongside teenage pupils at Keswick School. She is now in the final year of a degree course at Charlotte Mason College and hopes to progress to an MA in literature. Mr Gannon left school at 12 unable to read or write; 43 years later he plucked up the courage to take an Adult Basic Education course at Filton College, Bristol.

Ms Southcoat, 34, a mother of three from Birmingham, decided to resume her education to pursue a professional career in social work. With no qualifications, she needed to improve her writing, so joined an Adult Basic Education group and gained the City and Guilds Wordpower qualification, which gave her the confidence to apply for an Access course in social science. Ms Southcoat's dream to take a degree and begin social work is now a real possibility.

Disabilities feature prominently among the Outstanding Adult Learner finalists. Sally O'Shea who has cerebral palsy, and Joan Hunter, a mother of five who is visually impaired, are both writing autobiographies. Ms O'Shea is typing hers on a word processor with her feet because she cannot use her hands. Others have persevered with their studies through illness, bereavement, homelessness, mental breakdown, financial hardship. Often, they say, it was education that kept them sane.

Since the separation of further education colleges from local government control on 1 April, responsibility for some non-vocational adult education has been left in limbo, dangling between the independent further education sector and local authorities. The latter have a statutory duty to make 'adequate' provision, but in practice many are making only a token financial gesture towards adult education.

One finalist, Wendy Parrett from Newark, is directly affected by cuts in Nottinghamshire. As a dressmaking and fashion teacher, almost all her classes face closure because the rise in fees (from pounds 3 to pounds 18 a term for over-65s) is beyond the means of her predominantly elderly students. As well as putting Ms Parrett out of a job, the cuts will hit a vulnerable group and end an enriching part of their lives.

'The legislation which made provision for adult education is too weak,' says Alan Tuckett, director of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education. 'We are concerned about the short-term planning, which is cold comfort for people who want consistency and progression. The financial barriers to participation are being further compounded by the proposed introduction of VAT on non-vocational classes such as keep-fit and flower-arranging. What we need to be doing is dismantling these barriers, not adding to them.'

Then comes the issue of grants. Most degree courses carry mandatory grants, but further and adult education courses rarely do. The virtual disintegration of discretionary local authority grants means that few courses below degree level earn financial assistance. Refugees are being hit particularly hard. Mohamed Ali Mahmoud, finalist in the South-east, fled Eritrea seeking political asylum. He is now studying for a BTEC National Diploma in science and hopes to take a degree in chemistry in order to return to his family and help his country.

Despite the uncertain future of adult education, the spirit of this year's adult learners can be summed up in the words of an Open University student nominated for an award in Tyne-Tees. Arlene McKeever, studying for an advanced diploma in criminology, has fibrosis of the lungs. Despite this terminal illness, she is full of determination. 'I can now say to people who are disabled or very ill: 'Don't just give up, be positive. You can still reach for the stars'.'

(Photograph omitted)