Cappuccino with extra Italian?

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It’s a rainy February evening in a Costa coffee shop in East Putney, south-west London. The shop is closed to the public but a group of men and women are gathered there, drinking coffee and practising Italian phrases with teacher Alessandro Fantauzzo. Two are here for work reasons, others to build their language confidence for holidays. In the past, they might have gone to a night class at a local adult education college. But over the past decade, funding for courses that don’t lead to a formal qualification has been slashed. Since 2010, the adult learning budget has been cut by about 40%. It was this that gave former teacher Jason Elsom the idea of offering night classes in coffee shops. Approached by the coffee chain Costa to help develop its charitable foundation, which aims to extend education opportunities, he suggested it offer space in its shops for tutors and their students.

Everyone feels at home in a coffee shop, he says.“You’ll see everyone there. Young mums, business meetings, retired people. And they are often located in places where there aren’t opportunities for adults to learn at all. Plus some people really struggle with going anywhere outside of their daily routine. Not because of a lack of a desire to learn, but because they don’t like things they aren’t used to.” All the students learned about the class through table-top adverts in the coffee shop, their local haunt, and found the idea less intimidating than attending a college. One student, Anne Clark, says the lack of exams was important in her decision to attend. “I never liked them and I’m not starting at this time in life.” Heather Naylor, a furniture business owner in her 50s, says she finds colleges “spooky at night, and they smell really weird” whereas the coffee shop has “mint tea, and it’s convivial”.

Prices of pop-up classes vary, depending on who runs them and what the classes involve, and can range from £120 for six language classes through to access courses (for learners who don’t have A-levels* but want to progress to higher education) at about £3,000. The Italian pop-up in East Putney is run by uTalk, a software company that sells a language app. Students get the app free of charge. Although uTalkdoesn’t make a profit from the classes, they do help build awareness of its brand. As someone who benefited from night school, I am enthused by the plan. Back in the late 1990s I took A-levels at night school while working in McDonald’s. Without those A-levels I would not have got into Oxford University. Other students in my classes had different but equally important reasons for being there, including getting extra qualifications so they could gain a new job or pay rise. For one of my fellow students who had had mental health problems, attending night school meant getting out of the house for the first time in years.

Last month the Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, provoked a debate on night schoolsin parliament, asking for more opportunities for people over 30 to retrain. He was inspired by his mum, who took shorthand night classes so she could become a secretary, before going on to manage Haringey council. “The prime minister should be on a mission to bring back night schools,” Lammy says. “Britain has become a brutal country for people who don’t make their way to university. Many people in the Westminster bubble have no idea how hard it is for ordinary folk in their 30s and 40s, with a mortgage and kids, to get the qualifications to move up and get better paying jobs.” Money does matter but it is about finding ways for people to feel comfortable and confident with learning, in whichever settings work best for them. “In the end, it isn’t just about qualifications,” says Lammy, “it is about empowerment. That is the tradition we need to return to.”

* “pop up”: éphémère

*A-levels: British equivalent of the baccalauréat