Prisons: Education and Training

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Ramsbotham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what impact prison staff cuts have had on the provision of education, job training and substance abuse programmes in Her Majesty’s prisons.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)]

My Lords, staff reductions have been made as part of the benchmarking reforms of public sector prisons. Benchmarking is the best means of delivering value for money for the public purse. It either increases purposeful activity or sustains current levels, and refocuses work and job training to enhance prisoners’ employment prospects on release. The Prison Service works closely with commissioners of substance misuse services and education to optimise the provision of these services to meet prisoners’ needs.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

I thank the noble Lord for that rather disappointing reply. Provision of and access to education and training are two key factors in any meaningful attempt to prevent reoffending. I cannot imagine that anyone responsible for the conduct of imprisonment could be happy about an Ofsted report which finds that, despite some prisons having state-of-the-art facilities:

“Training and education in prisons are very poor and are failing to support offenders into employment… In many prisons, training and education comes too far down the list of priorities for prison governors and other senior staff.”

Nor could anyone be happy about a London University Institute of Education survey which found that 62% of prison educators criticised the negative effect of payment by results on prisoners as learners, and on the overall quality of education. When prison educators are complaining and prison staff are speaking openly about the difficulties of getting prisoners to education due to cuts in staffing, I hope that Ministers are suitably concerned. Will the Minister please tell the House what steps are being taken to rectify the situation?

[Lord Faulks]

Many steps are being taken. Work is progressing on introducing a new mandatory assessment for all newly received prisoners by OLASS, the Offender Learning and Skills Service providers. This will ensure that all offenders receive a learning assessment focused on English and maths, rather than those who simply go on to learning. NOMS and its partners are working towards implementing better data about sharing arrangements. I should say that intensive maths and English courses are being piloted in prisons, based on a model adopted in the Army, particularly to address prisoners serving short sentences.