With all the emphasis on the vast sums of public money being spent to nudge the country out of recession, it’s quite a shock to see the BBC report that there are two million fewer people attending government-funded adult education classes than there were six years ago.

There’s a predictable and rather unenlightening ping-pong between the government and the opposition about what’s really going on, but no one thinks that this fall comes from a sudden loss of interest in learning.

What’s happened is that, within a broadly flat budget for adults (people aged 19 years and over), the government has switched its focus away from leisure courses – “holiday Spanish” is their handy label – in order to fund more apprenticeships.

Whatever you think of that, for people in work and for employers keen to support them, it means that there is less government support for those who use their own initiative to keep learning.

Government funding isn’t everything, of course, but if ministers are seeking new ways to stimulate the economy - and to help people who have been made redundant or who fear that they will be unless they update their skills - I would like to see more money being made available to help people whose opportunities to learn are now rather more limited than they were.