ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the growth and development of the community education service from its beginnings in youthwork and community development have endowed it and its staff with philosophical predispositions, group work, community work and informal educational skills for working in particular ways with community groups. The community development approach has taken a special kind of educational opportunity to those who have hitherto been unattracted by the style, content and mode of delivery of traditional adult education. It is argued that there are enormous gains in the harnessing of an educational dimension to the community development process both in human terms and in relation to the availability of educational opportunities to the whole population. The role of the community education service in the postcompulsory education strategy is explored and the contribution of the community education worker as a ‘network agent’ in Lovett’s terms is underlined. It is a role which, because of training and deployment, the community education worker is uniquely equipped to perform.
