Education in Prisons

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble Lord and I share the ambition for our prisons to be places where people turn their lives around, and education has a big part to play in that. We are making progress. In five prisons, we have the working week happening now—31 hours of purposeful activity. This year, 10% more prisoners participated in education compared to last year, which is really good. Our reading strategy is now in every prison, and the third sector is involved in that. I am a big believer that we need to strongly manage contracts. As I said last week, there are too many classrooms with teachers but not enough prisoners. We need to see more of them. I have also changed the word “education” in our prisons to “skills academy”, thinking that that would appeal more to our prisoners who did not have a good experience of education. I saw that last week in HMP Hindley, where I had positive feedback from the staff and prisoners.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned reading, but he knows that nearly 70% of people entering prison are assessed as having numeracy levels below that of a primary school child. This both hinders rehabilitation and increases recidivism. Is the Minister aware of Shannon Trust’s model of support? It uses peer mentoring to teach maths to prisoners who would not engage with traditional education. It is a model that can take place outside normal structures and reach parts of the prison that formal education cannot. What assessment have the Government made of this model of support and how might they provide further support to Shannon and other charities to roll it out more widely?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I am a big fan of the Shannon Trust. It does fantastic work in many prisons and I would like to see more of it. A number of other third-sector organisations play an equally important role: Storybook Dads is one that I have been interested in for a long time, and the National Literacy Trust does really good work as well. The role of peer mentoring is important. Often, fellow prisoners and volunteers are the people who turn someone’s life around. I have employed many people from prison who did not come out of prison with great reading and maths but who were inspired by somebody who helped them to turn their lives around. The role of the Shannon Trust and others is crucial.