Only the presence of powerful voices - the middle class, to be precise - can protect a service and its users from the destabilising initiatives from on high.

The otherwise laudable focus on basic skills and level 2 provision in colleges has serious dangers. The insistence on chasing government targets runs the risk of impoverishing the clientele of FE colleges and turning them into post-16 secondary moderns. Colleges are being robbed of those best able to speak out against the casual vandalism that runs through the skills agenda. Colleges with only a remedial role will lose out in the two-tier system towards which public services seem to gravitate if left unchecked.