STOCKTON is looking to the continent to help educate adults in the region.

The adult education service at Stockton Borough Council is linking up with towns in Spain, Greece, Slovakia, Germany and Norway to come up with new methods of training adults.

This new partnership with European neighbours comes after the department received cash from the Socrates Grundtvig project to promote international co-operation in life-long learning.

Staff in Stockton will now be working with foreign colleagues to improve ways of making learning more accessible to socially deprived people.

Part of the project will involve delegations from Stockton travelling abroad to see how adult education works on the continent, in exchange for foreign delegates coming to Teesside to swap ideas.

John Harris, the council's adult education officer, said: "What we are looking for are different approaches and methods of teaching groups of hard to reach people.

"It may be that some of our partners who visit us will be fascinated to see the training programme we offer and the way it is organised and nationally validated."