Education runs in cycles and is not so easily interrupted. The three-minute silence was observed and then people got back to work. Perhaps that’s all there is to say. Unfortunately, global events don’t go away that easily. Catastrophe theorists used to say that a butterfly flapping its wings in New York could cause a tornado at the other side of the world. If so, who can ignore this catastrophe?

The insularity of learning and skills in England protected it from immediate casualties. Foreign trips for work are few and far between. Each trip has to be accounted for in detail and must be fully authorised to satisfy the National Audit Office. It is unlikely that more than a handful of people from the sector were in New York for work on September 11. And the start of the autumn term also means few people would be on holiday. Nevertheless, 6,000 dead in the most international city in the world will inevitably include former staff and students, friends, families and neighbours.

The second impact of the bombing could arise from the escalation of the conflict. Many urban colleges have diverse groups of students and in some cases, they co-exist uneasily. International conflict could increase tension, particularly if religion is involved. Conflict could also bring more asylum-seekers. Further and adult education is the largest employer of teachers of English for Speakers of Other Languages. If the UK accepts refugees from any future conflict, many will end up in college classrooms.

The economic impact of the atrocities on education and training is unclear. Higher oil prices and larger insurance premiums would be inconvenient but they are hardly budget-breaking. Lower interest rates will reduce the interest income on the reserves sitting in college bank accounts. Again, inconvenient but not threatening.

The current drive for Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) relies on a healthy stock market to push money into construction and service companies. The Government likes PPP because it transfers risk to the private sector. If a recession happens, businesses will look for safer bets and charge a high price for this risk transfer. This will make traditional procurement more attractive but only if the Government keeps its promise to maintain capital spending in bad times as well as good.

The big economic issue for colleges and providers is what happens to the demand for learning. We may see more requests for security training and fewer for leisure and tourism. Long-standing company strategies may go into reverse. A key point is the difficulty of prediction. Companies cutting costs to improve their results for the next quarter might well shed staff and drop training programmes. Their employees might feel less willing to spend time and money on courses. This could frustrate the Government’s desire to encourage more individual commitment to learning.

In other areas, the opposite might happen. Some people might take the chance to retrain. A changing economy could persuade more young, unemployed people back into college. But they will only do so with government funding. Even with the New Deal, government spending on training the unemployed is still less than it was in the early 1990s. Whether good or bad for enrolment, a recession has one clear effect - it makes the learning and skills sector more dependent on the Treasury.

The Government will be working out its budget for 2003-06 over the next eight months. Gordon Brown said last week that existing spending plans for 2003-04 would not change. These plans envisage considerable growth in the total Learning and Skills Council budget. Events might not affect the cash total but they could change the priorities. If participation goes up because there is no work, attention will focus on what they are participating in.

The most profound effects of September 11 may be the intangible ones. The world feel a little less safe. Security barriers and ID cards appear. Open access policies become less easy to sustain. Confidence and trust is damaged. The main priority of government and society may no longer be “education, education and education”.

Julian Gravatt is finance director at the City Lit, London.