Education, education, education, and for good measure, let's make that lifelong education - a battle cry if ever I heard one.

But it begins to look as though it was a hollow call to arms if the information I have been sent by Bob Gunnell, the Older People's Council Member for Lifelong Learning, is correct.

The Learning and Skills Council is a comparatively new organisation and its Sussex office just happens to be in Brighton, which means the city should be pretty close to the action.

But when the Older People's Council took a good look at the facilities on offer locally, it came as somewhat of a shock to find what the costs for such high ideals could be.

A paper recently before it showed a 20-week course could cost a pensioner £90, a hefty sum for someone whose council tax is set to rise well above the rate of inflation and whose pension is unlikely to rise by anything approaching such a figure.

Of course, there are reductions on certain courses but many of those are in the evening and in the winter, when many elderly folk are not keen to venture out.

In any case, any reductions are down to the generosity of the educational establishments involved and are by no means across the board.

Daytime courses at centres such as the Connaught Education Centre have reductions on offer of a mere four to five per cent. Obviously, the £90 could be put to better use - however much the recipient might wish to take up the offer of lifelong education.

Now, given the emphasis put on encouraging the older generation to remain active and involved you could be justified in thinking the Learning and Skills Council would be right there in the forefront of things, offering its full support to any who needed it to fulfil their aspirations, not to mention the benefits of encouraging such occupations for the elderly.

You would be wrong.

The report before the Older People's Council makes it clear that, while there are reductions for job seekers and other groups seen to be in need of some support, there is absolutely nothing on offer to help the less affluent among the older generation.

The skills council quite simply does not consider older people as special cases. No financial backing is in place for them at all. The local colleges have come down firmly in support of giving financial aid to the older would-be students but to no avail.

The Older People's Council has written to the Learning and Skills Council putting forward a strong case for changing this policy.

It is pointless the Government setting out ambitions and then tying the hands of those who try to fulfil them.

Adult education courses do more than simply inform their partakers. They provide a forum for an exchange of views, social intercourse and encourage mental stimulation among the older generation.

If 'education, education, education' is not to become a meaningless, parrot-like platitude then the powers that be must give the Skills Council the money to do the job properly.

If they do not, it will be seen as a hollow promise. For some of those seeking to extend their education, albeit late in life, it should be recognised that many of them had their formal education interrupted by war or family circumstances. Lifelong learning should mean what it says and the Older People's Council is to be congratulated for trying to make it reality.