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Select Committee on Education & Skills

A Briefing on Prison Education from OCR

 

Introduction

 

If education within the prison service is to achieve the goals for which it

aims then it should have a coherent structure and it must provide

relevant qualifications which are recognised and valued in the wider world.

Without the measurement of outcomes, it can never be entirely clear

whether resources are being directed in the most effective manner for

both the prisoner and the prison service.  Courses such as Basic Skills enable students to develop and demonstrate literacy and numeracy – key areas in which many prisoners have poor levels of achievement.  Courses leading to GCSEs or vocational certification enable prisoners to gain access to the same, mainstream, qualifications as those awarded in schools or colleges. 

 

OCR is the UK arm of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate.  Its roots go back to 1858 and it was created from the Oxford, Cambridge, Oxford & Cambridge, Midland Examining Group and the, vocationally-focused, Royal Society of Arts examination boards.  It deals with over 7 million exam papers a year and employs 578 staff. It is the only University owned UK awarding body.  Around 3,000 schools and colleges sit OCR qualifications each year. It is one of three awarding bodies covering both general and vocational qualifications in England.

 

OCR’s Role in Prisons

 

1.      OCR offers a comprehensive range of qualifications which are taken up by prisons.  131 out of the 138 public prisons use OCR qualifications.  The most prevalent are Basic Skills and the CLAIT (Computer Literacy and Information Technology) suite of qualifications.  The majority of the demand is for Level 1 qualifications.

 

2.      OCR also runs a wide programme of training events and network meetings which prison education staff attend alongside staff from other education and skills training providers.  These events enable those staff to improve their assessment of prisoners’ achievements and benchmark their practice against other organisations.  In addition, network meetings are provided specifically for prison education staff to enable them to explore examples of good practice and discuss possible solutions to issues faced by other prisons.

 

3.      OCR’s team of centre advisors has visited a high number of prisons in order to ascertain their demand for qualifications and clarify the way in which operational constraints affect offenders’ achievements.  This team has also established contact with organisations such as NACRO and the resettlement services, in order to improve continuity and progression for offenders who can continue learning when they are rehabilitated, and with prison education contractors in order to confirm OCR’s awareness of, and responsiveness to, the demands placed on them.

 

4.      Since 2002 OCR has been running a project to encourage takeup of OCR qualifications in prisons improving the prisons’ performance against their Key Performance Targets.  This has been reflected in better assessment practice and improved offenders’ attainments.

 

 

 

 OCR’s Experience in Prisons

 

5.      In OCR’s experience what has been working well is:

·         the appointment of Heads of Learning and Skills, who are drawing together the learning and training activities and enabling offenders to achieve qualifications across the whole range of these activities (classroom, gym, workshop etc)

·         the commitment of teaching staff who often produce materials on home PCs in their own time because of restrictions on PC use within their prison

·         contracting arrangements where the contractor is experienced in delivering education within the prison environment and is able to offer value and improve standards

·         the existence of specific performance targets for achievements

·         local decision-making on learning programmes to ensure they meet the specific needs of the participants.

 

6.      In OCR’s experience the following have had detrimental effects:

·         by the uncertainty of their current and future funding systems and criteria

·         the transition from one organisational regime to another

·         the abrupt curtailment of Project Rex for contracting out prison education. 

The consequence of the curtailment has been short-term programming centring on Basic Skills and brief ‘quick win’ courses in areas such as food handling and safety.  The corollary of this has been a reluctance to attempt more ambitious or longer-term programmes in case they do not achieve immediate, recordable performance target achievements.

 

6.      A significant restriction on participation is the prevalence of institutional demands and schedules, for example lockdowns, medical appointments, court appearances and solicitors’ appointments.  The often short-notice withdrawals from learning are very damaging to participants’ learning programmes.

 

Recommendations in Relation to Qualifications

 

1.      The contribution of specific qualifications towards key performance targets should be reviewed urgently to ensure actual parity between qualifications deemed to make the same contribution.  For example a one-day food-handling course is believed to have the same target value as a full CLAIT course which may take several weeks or months to complete.

 

2.      Units of achievement should be recognised and contribute towards performance targets at all levels, not just level 2, in order to allow lower-achieving offenders to accumulate units towards a full qualification.

 

3.      Decisions on the eligibility of qualifications to count towards targets should become consistent between prison regions.  At present there are uncertainties and anecdotal indications of inconsistency in regional judgements on the eligibility of qualifications.

 

4.      Prisoners should be entered for qualifications which are available nationally rather than for home-made or ‘prisons only’ qualifications which have limited currency.

 

5.      A national database of unitary achievement should be established to record all achievements which contribute towards performance targets.  The database should enable any prisoner to accumulate units even if s/he is transferred without notice to another prison; in effect, operating as an achievement tracking system.  At present records seem rarely to follow a prisoner from one establishment to another.

 

Wider Recommendations in Relation to Prison Education

 

6.      A longer-term funding commitment for learning should be initiated by the management of the service. This would be analogous to the three-year arrangement between further education colleges and the LSC.  This would enable longer-term planning and staffing decisions.  Funding should be ring-fenced to education and training activities, not siphoned off for unexpected operational expenditure.

 

7.      Prisoners should receive equal pay for education and other job roles to redress the current disincentive to participate or continue in learning when more lucrative alternatives are available.

 

8.      The balance of full-time and part-time staffing should be improved to the same level as in the general further education sector, and the development of staff’s skills should continue to be treated as a priority.