ABSTRACT
Informal learning in the post-compulsory sector has always been on a large scale. The numbers of adult students studying part-time through extra-mural provision, for example, were always far greater in the 1960s and 1970s than the number of full-time undergraduate students: and when the picture is broadened to include the whole post-compulsory sector, the contrast was even more marked. By 1995–96 there were over three million learners in the FE sector alone (FEFC, 1996).
