ABSTRACT
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s government and local authority cuts in spending on community based adult education, together with the widespread abolition and downsizing of university extramural departments and the shift in emphasis towards funding for accredited, qualification-led provision at the expense of informal and non-accredited provision, have all contributed to making it much more difficult to sustain grass roots, working class and women’s education with a radical edge. Further reorganisation of post-sixteen education is, at the time of writing, the subject of government legislation (Learning and Skills Bill 1999). Communitybased learning has been put back on the agenda but it is too soon to predict precisely what this will mean.
