More people are learning overall now. In 1991, just 36 per cent of adults said they had engaged in learning over the past three years. By 1996 that number had risen to 40 per cent, and this year’s survey shows 42 per cent, slipping back from 46 per cent in 2001.

Growth has not been even though. Over the decade, participation among top professional and managerial groups rose from 50 to 60 per cent. Among the poorest, by contrast, growth was just 2 percentage points - from 23 to 25 per cent. Last year’s figures showed a more optimistic picture. This year’s survey suggests that the struggle to create a learning society is a major one, and that the learning divide persists.

But there have been important changes. There was a 4 per cent gap in men’s and women’s participation rates in 1991. In 2002 the gap has closed.

The major losers over the decade have been older learners. In 1991, 15 per cent of adults over 65 said they were learning formally or informally. After a quarter of the already small cohort of older learners dropped out in the mid 1990s, their participation rate has crept back to 16 per cent. This despite the success of the University of the Third Age and the commitment to Better Government for Older People.

In its 1992 election manifesto, Labour said it would introduce an education entitlement for adults over 50. Andrew Smith, the then opposition spokesman for further and higher education and now Chief Secretary at the Treasury, argued the case eloquently. But by 1997, that policy was lost, subsumed by broader commitments.

Older adults were also the big losers when changes derived from the 1992 legislation kicked in. Courses that were not accredited failed to get funds and community-based learning suffered successive cuts. Things have improved since the Learning and Skills Act triggered modest growth - at least until next year.

Participation dropped during the 1990s though, research shows that learning is good for your health, and prolongs your active citizenship. The population is also ageing, which means that the economic value of older people must be more widely recognised.

Tom Schuller, architect of the proposals in 1992 for older learners’

entitlement, has dusted off the idea and adapted it for this decade, in a provocative report for the Institute for Public Policy Research. It could be just the thing to correct the imbalance in policies dominated now - just as they were a decade ago - by the youth agenda.

You could see this in John Harwood’s impressive presentation to the All Party Parliamentary Group for Further and Adult Education, on the day of the FE lobby of Parliament. The case he made for investment in the sector, and for decent pay for staff, was powerful and persuasive. Yet apart from his opening sentence, all the evidence he cited on the achievements was about 16 to 19-year-olds. This is hardly surprising when area inspections are limited to that age group, when 14 to 19 policy and the Prime Minister’s target for HE all focus on young people.

But the great success of colleges in the 1990s was to open themselves up to tens of thousands of adult learners. Adult participation is the main business of many colleges. And, overwhelmingly, they do it well. That work needs the nurture of regular scrutiny and celebration.

I thought colleges had good reason to take heart from the MPs’ report on ILAs. The picture that emerged was of a scheme well served by publicly funded bodies, and by established private-sector training providers - damaged by the failure to secure minimum standards among new entrants, and to guard against fraud.

And the moral of all this? Simple: value adults as well as young people, trust the public sector more, and celebrate achievement. There is clearly still a need for Adult Learners Week each year.

Alan Tuckett is director of the National Institute of Adult Continuing