Dyslexia (Prisons)

Jeremy Wright Excerpts

Wednesday 21st November 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) on securing this debate on a very important subject. I am grateful to her, too, for introducing me to the work of her constituent, Jackie Hewitt-Main. I look forward to meeting her and my hon. Friend on 5 December to discuss this matter further.

It is clear that Ms Hewitt-Main’s project, “Dyslexia Behind Bars” contains some interesting approaches to a substantial problem. Using a multi-sensory and mentoring approach, she has offered a great deal to the inmates of Chelmsford prison, and there is a great deal there that we will wish to explore. As far as I know, this work has not yet been assessed or reviewed by an independent organisation and although its initial results are promising, further work will be necessary to ensure that they are as good as they appear to be. It seems sensible to explore with my hon. Friend the ways in which we can change things to improve what is on offer.

It is also worth saying that the National Offender Management Service is considering a review of the evidence on effective working with offenders with learning difficulties and disabilities, and I will come back to what is already being done in a moment.

The particular areas of Ms Hewitt-Main’s work that my hon. Friend highlighted, and that are particularly interesting in the context of what my hon. Friend said we are doing more generally in the Justice Department, include peer mentoring. I have seen very good examples of peer mentoring in the prison system, with older, more established prisoners assisting younger and newer prisoners in a variety of ways. The work that my hon. Friend described is only one of those ways.

As my hon. Friend also said, teaching and learning in a non-classroom environment are important. We must recognise that the classroom environment did not work for a great many of the prisoners we are talking about at school, and it probably will not work for them in custody either, so we have to find new and imaginative approaches that, as she said, involve the whole prison.

It is also worth noting that, as I understand it, Ms Hewitt-Main’s programme involved some mentoring of people after they leave prison. As my hon. Friend will have picked up from the speech yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice, that is also an area on which we wish to focus.

It may be helpful if I set out some of the work that is already being done, at which we are having another look to ensure that it is being done in the best possible way. Since taking up this post, I have been very keen to ensure that the importance of learning and skills within the prison estate and beyond is high on the agenda. Indeed, my hon. Friend will have noted that the Prime Minister also mentioned learning and skills in his recent speech on offenders.

In particular, of course, the low levels of literacy and numeracy among prisoners as a group should concern us all, not only because of the impact on those individuals and their ability to function in a world where reading and writing are essential skills, but because a lack of sufficient literacy and numeracy skills excludes people from the vast majority of employment opportunities. I am sure, as are many others, that having a job can make a significant impact on reducing reoffending, and that skills such as organisation, communication, teamwork, writing, speaking and listening are necessary to perform effectively in most, if not all, work roles.

Prisoners with dyslexia are, of course, disadvantaged in that respect, not only because dyslexia presents them with particular issues in terms of competence in reading and writing, but because dyslexia is recognised as impairing organisational skills. My hon. Friend obviously has a clear personal perspective on dyslexia and its effects, which has been extremely valuable in the debate.

Of course, engaging with prisoners on learning and skills can be difficult, as my hon. Friend recognised. Some prisoners may have had negative experiences in their education and even been excluded, and consequently they see little value in education. Statistics that I have seen recently suggest that nearly half of prisoners identified themselves as having left education with no qualifications at all. Dyslexia magnifies that problem. It can be very difficult to recognise and is often masked. Not all schools will have had the specialist provision to support children and young people who have this difficulty.

Since reading and writing are “gateway” skills that enable children and young people to engage confidently with their wider educational experience, as well as in many basic social relationships, poor educational experiences can create reluctant learners. The experience of being excluded from positive experiences of learning to read, write and communicate more widely remains with many prisoners into adulthood. That presents an additional challenge in custody, where engaging with reluctant learners can be particularly difficult if memories of the classroom act as a barrier to taking the opportunities that education can provide.

Dyslexia is only one condition in a range of learning difficulties and disabilities that prisoners may present with, and that require specialist and systematic approaches. We need to provide as much support as we can to prisoners with LDDs, to improve their chances in the workplace as well as their confidence, self-esteem and social skills. Without dedicated input, the impact of much learning support in reading and writing may be reduced or lost.

The NOMS learning disabilities and difficulties working group exists to oversee the national implementation of an LDD screening process for prisoners, and to develop a broader LDD strategy across prisons. Apart from various officials from NOMS, membership of the group includes officials from the Department of Health, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and the Prison Reform Trust. I welcome, as I am sure my hon. Friend does, the contribution made by the group, as these issues can be resolved only by partners across Government and the voluntary sector working together. The group is involved in the development of NOMS guidance for better outcomes for offenders with LDDs. It is also developing guidance on reasonable adjustments for prisoners with LDDs, to ensure that they are integrated into the prison community and that they have the best opportunity to participate in activities that support their rehabilitation. Further commitments for the current year include improving staff awareness, as well as prisoner and peer training.

Returning to a point that my hon. Friend made about the crucial importance of our knowing how many people in prison have dyslexia and other learning disabilities, a learning disability screening questionnaire has been piloted on three sites, and NOMS is considering whether it should be used across the prison estate. The Youth Justice Board is using a similar tool—the comprehensive health assessment tool—with young offenders. That will go some way towards addressing the point that she raised and on which my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) focused: identifying the number of people we are dealing with.

My hon. Friend and also mentioned the Skills Funding Agency and its hidden disabilities screening tool, which of course identifies issues wider than LDDs. It has been used by all the SFA’s custodial Offender Learning and Skills Service providers since August 2009. Our aim is that this tool will eventually be adopted and used by all OLASS providers, both in custody and in the community, and ultimately by all mainstream providers.

We are also making radical changes to the way that learning and skills are delivered in prisons, which will encompass the support that we want to be made available to all prisoners with LDDs. As part of that radical programme of change, we have published a document that my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point may have seen—if she has not seen it, I commend it to her—called “Making prisons work: skills for rehabilitation”. That is the new offender learning strategy, which was published jointly with BIS. The strategy recognised that improving prisoners’ literacy skills was central to rehabilitation, as we have discussed today, and we are taking steps to ensure the implementation of the report’s recommendations.

To give an idea of the scale of the problem that literacy and numeracy difficulties present in prisons, in the academic year 2010-11 almost 30% of prisoners had such low levels of reading and writing skills that, in order to bring them up to a basic functional level, individual learning aims for literacy and numeracy had to be set for them. Overall, 65% of prisoners enrolled on literacy and numeracy programmes were successful in achieving the literacy and numeracy functional skills goals that had been set as part of their individual learning plans. For some, it meant learning to read and write, while for others it meant improving their basic literacy and numeracy so that they could operate with more confidence and competence.

The revised Offender Learning and Skills Service, which is OLASS 4, was implemented as a result of the “Making prisons work” strategy, and it will make additional provision against assessed need. OLASS 4 requires education providers to identify the support needs of offenders with LDDs or special educational needs through a learning difficulty assessment, or LDA. Requirements identified through the assessment should be addressed through personalised, customised programmes delivered by specialist qualified staff. My hon. Friend will recognise the importance of that approach, because not all offenders have identical needs. OLASS 4 providers understand, and are able to deliver, the specific and systematic approaches to learning that are required by prisoners with such difficulties.

Crucially, however, through OLASS 4 and the work that we are doing more widely with other Departments, we are more strongly linking skills to employment, and I believe that there is still more work to do in that regard. Arrangements are also in place to allow OLASS 4 providers to draw together funding to support prisoners with LDDs, through a specific adult learning support allocation that is designed to match the support that mainstream learners in colleges or training organisations receive. A budget for additional learning support of £7.1 million is available to the OLASS 4 providers, to enable the introduction of specific assessment processes to identify offenders with LDD needs and to provide those offenders with the expert teaching and support that they require.

In addition, my hon. Friend may be aware of the work of the Shannon Trust’s “Toe by Toe” reading scheme, which is also available in prisons. Again, this scheme uses peer mentors, supported by volunteers, teaching staff and prison officers, and it is based on best practice developed through teachers’ experiences of enabling children with dyslexia to read. That is enormously beneficial to many offenders.

In conclusion, I welcome today’s debate, and I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue. I assure her that, although we believe that much good work is being done already, there is still a great deal more to do, and we are certainly open to new and good ideas, including those that I look forward to discussing with her and her constituent.