ABSTRACT
The centre for the education of adults which is described in this article serves an area containing some tens of thousands of inhabitants in a large northern English city. It forms part of the local education authority’s ‘community education’ service. The term ‘community education’ is used partly as an administrative convenience, serving to encompass the authority’s adult and youth work separately from their schools, but partly also as a reflection of a philosophy, held by the city’s politicians and practitioners alike, of what can and ought to be achieved in this field of provision. The local authority is by no means the only provider of educational opportunities for adults in the city, though it is one of the more important. The city’s university and polytechnic, the local branch of the Workers’ Educational Association, and many other local associations provide opportunities of different kinds at different levels, sometimes in co-ordination with the local education authority.
