I HAVE just received a leaflet advertising adult classes at Sir John Deane's College Northwich, which led me to the question: of what happened to our thriving adult/evening classes which were held at Knutsford High School (Academy) for many years?

I went there as a teacher in 1961 when many of the staff looked forward to being involved in adult education in the evening as well as the daily teaching of schoolchildren. Others from the community also taught in their qualified subjects.

The school has always been very well equipped, and the upper and lower schools throbbed with activity on weekday evenings. Classes typically included vocational classes where meant adults and older pupils could take, or re-sit GCSE exams in English, maths and French.

In addition there were non vocational classes in art, pottery, metalwork, woodwork, yoga, keep fit, badminton, computer skills, cookery, photography, guitar tuition, and any other subject where 15 or more people applied.

The Academy is possibly Knutsford's biggest institution with a huge range of facilities for sport, music, state of the art computer studios and technical equipment in the art and design department. It seems a great waste of such a facility and investment for it not to be open for use by the local community in the evenings and possibly weekends.

In the past the adult education sector was organised by Cheshire County Council as part of a commitment to ongoing education for all, but with the devolving of budgets to individual schools, it seems now left to schools themselves to decide whether to open up their facilities to the local community.

Sir John Deane's appear to be doing a great service to the town of Northwich, and also presumably showing that running these classes can be profitable.

David Roberts Knutsford