Appendix 2
Background of contract arrangements for prison
education since 1991 (provided by NATFHE).
1991 Until 1991 prison education was funded
by the Home Office and delivered under contract by LEA adult education
services and FE colleges. Contracts for prison education services
were then put out to tender. Contracts were issued for five years
and went to a variety of providers, largely FE colleges. Some
colleges had multiple contracts geographically spread across the
country. Mostly there was a reasonable proximity to the prison
and the education contractor, but some contractors were anything
up to 150 miles away from the actual prison.
Prison education budgets were placed in the hands
of prison governors who could "vire" money to other
areas of the prisons.
1991 - 1996 Prison education was subject to
decisions by governors often made for non-educational reasons
and suffered large cuts in provision with losses of many full-time
prison education lecturers.
1996 Prison education contracts were re-tendered.
Contracts went to FE colleges, two LEAs and one private provider.
Some colleges had developed a considerable expertise in prison
education.
2001 Responsibility for prison education was
shared between Prison Services and the DfES. A separate unit was
established - the Prisoners Learning and Skills Unit (PLSU), now
the Offenders Prison Learning and Skills Unit. The PLSU had a
network of Area Managers who had a geographic and lead responsibility
for an area of work. Recently the Prison Service appointed a Head
of Learning and Skills with a responsibility for all learning
in prisons. They are directly employed by Prison service and are
part of management of prisons.
With the establishment of the PLSU, the funding for
prison education was transferred from the Home Office and Prison
Service to the DfES and ring fenced for education work
2002/3 The PLSU commissioned Price Waterhouse
Cooper (PWC) to review the funding of prison education. This review
found little connection between the vocational training that went
on in prisons (in workshops with directly employed instructors)
and other aspects of prison life such as offending behaviour and
management programmes, sentence management and resettlement. The
Review took the broad line that funding should be more closely
aligned to individual prisoners' learning needs and the characteristics
of their sentence and the actual prison.
Numerous options were put forward for the future
of funding and contracting of prison education. The outcome of
the review was that a new re-tendering process would be undertaken
and a new specification for such contracts would be drawn for
prison education providers. The proposals made it clear that new
providers would be encouraged to participate in the tendering
process. The project was titled Project Rex. It recommended that
prison education should again be re-tendered as a combined contract
of prison education and vocational training.
2003 Notice to contractors of the re-tendering
process was given in April and the date for the new contracts
to come into force was April 2004 - later changed to September
2004. Existing providers had their existing contracts extended
twice to meet these timescales).
2004 In January 2004 Project Rex collapsed and
the Offender Learning and Skills Unit announced that current contracts
would be automatically extended for between 1 and 3 years from
September 2004.
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