IN response to Chris Titley's Diary piece about our successful Bite Size Intros campaign to encourage adults to get back into learning (May 4), you are quite right that a campaign run with taxpayers' money must be accountable and should be open to public scrutiny.

In this particular case, the difficulty in supplying figures is that the campaign is running until the end of May, with additional courses planned to coincide with York Learning Festival.

In fact, the campaign won't be completed until the end of July. Only then will it be possible for us to give final figures for total cost and the numbers of people we have reached.

However, rather than stand accused of hiding the figures, I thought I should give you a summary based on the information we have received so far and our predictions for courses to run during the next three months.

Since the campaign started last summer, 2,378 adults have joined Bite Size Intros in York and North Yorkshire.

About 41 per cent of these have been non-learners against an initial target of 30-40 per cent. About 80 per cent of those attending a Bite Size Intro have either signed up or are planning to go on to other, longer courses.

We predict that by the end of July the final tally will rise to around 3,500 learners. The cost of delivering Intros is now working out at around £60 a head. Given that a great many people who go on a Bite Size Intro then sign up for further learning, this is good value for money.

David Harbourne,

Executive director,

Learning and Skills Council North Yorkshire,

Pioneer Business Park,

Amy Johnson Way, York.

Updated: 11:27 Wednesday, May 12, 2004