Twilight learning

Evening classes offer something for everyone - learning, retraining and a better social life. Nick Jackson reports

It's a filthy winter night, but everyone has turned up for their evening class in room A231 at the famous CityLit institute in central London. The too-bright fluorescent glow of the lights is reminiscent of school, but the atmosphere is different. It's not just the diversity of backgrounds - this is an access to higher education class, for people who want to study at university but don't have the formal education for it.

What has drawn them back to study now? Julissa Lacey is more motivated now that she is older. "I felt before that I had to learn; I feel now that I want to learn," she says.

Some want to change direction. "My brain is dying. I want to teach, and for that I need a degree," says Kerri Alder, who likes the fact that the course is more structured than at school. "We weren't taught study skills then. There was the expectation that you just understood these things."

Another difference is that to study on one of the evening courses you have to pay a small fee, in this case £300 for the access course. Ms Alder acknowledges that the fear of wasting money motivates her. "I might drop out if it was free," she says.

Another student, Brad Austin, comments: "It means you're more ready to hold the teaching staff to account."

At my next port of call, an Visual Basic course for applications in Excel at City University in Angel, Islington, north London, most students are here to develop their careers and the room is filled with the intense silence of furrowed-brow concentration. Ray Hickey is an investment banker. "As I'm paying for the whole thing myself, there's an incentive to get as much out of it as I can," he says. "If it was a compulsory course I might go through the motions, but this way I'm more appreciative."

Down the road in Blackfriars, at the sports massage course run by CityLit, the room is filled with half-naked students stretched out on tables. The hands-on approach is a welcome relief to the students. "At school they drummed information into us," says Mark Miller, a performing arts graduate. "Here it's very different. The practical side is very important for me, as I'm dyslexic - something I only found out through a study skills class as part of a holistic massage class I did. Also, there aren't the troublemakers there were at school. So I can be less inhibited about revealing my personality."

The social side of evening-class culture - and even the chance to meet new partners - are raised as incentives by the people who run the courses. Is the prospect of meeting people a draw? "Although the most important part is vocational, you do make good friends, and that is a nice knock-on effect," says Helen Thorp, one of CityLit's sports massage students. For people who have arrived in London from abroad, it can serve as an important path to integration. Geraldine Khumalo is an asylum seeker from Zimbabwe. "The courses I did allowed me to widen my circle of friends, and get to know English society and meet English people," she says.

Philippa Miller, publisher of Floodlight, the London listings guides for evening classes, says that their beauty lies in the fact that there is something for everyone. "Evening classes are not just for anoraks, but an opportunity for absolutely anybody."

No one would call Daniel Crawford an anorak, at least not to his face. A burly second-year carpentry apprentice at Lewisham College, he is enthusiastic about continuing to study after he's graduated. "I'd definitely do more courses," he maintains. "It's important to know something about all parts of the trade, especially if you want to be a foreman."

This same love of learning has kept Ms Khumalo going back for more. "I started off with a RSA computer course to be employable. Then I did an access course in computing, and then a City and Guild's women's studies diploma."

The main achievement of part-time courses is to provide a forum for this love of learning and willingness to retrain. "Curiosity is a basic human trait," says Yvonne Hillier, head of the department of continuing education at City University. "Imagine if there were no part-time courses. Wouldn't it be terrible if people with this curiosity had nowhere to go?"