Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280-299)
20 OCTOBER 2004
DR JOHN
BRENNAN, MS
MERRON MITCHELL,
MS JEANNE
HARDING, MR
DAN TAUBMAN
AND MS
CHRISTIANE OHSAN
Q280 Chairman: So what you are saying
is that there is this cadre of really highly qualified, professional
teachers, teaching and tutoring in prisons. Will the change in
arrangements lose them or not? Is there a guarantee that we will
keep them, or will the contracts go to LSCs all over the country
and we will lose the professional expertise that we have built
up?
Ms Harding: That is a concern
that is already beginning to happen. Because staff are frightened
and they do not know what the future is—and they have mortgages
to pay, the same as anyone else—they are beginning to look
for permanent positions outside, if that is an option. A lot are
really dedicated to prison work and want to stay, but they have
their own personal lives to consider as well. I think that the
end of Project Rex caused a lot of concern. I spent a lot of time—and
I was new at the college at the time—going round saying,
"Yes, we are committed to prison education", "Yes,
we are behind you", knowing that there was no guarantee that
we would have the contract; no guarantee about who would get the
contract; or what was going to happen at that point of time. That
is destabilising, and we are talking about an area of work which
is difficult to recruit to generally. Teaching in FE in general
is difficult; basic skills work is incredibly difficult; work
in the young offenders' institutions is even harder, because they
should really be schoolteacher-trained and they earn an FE rate,
which is considerably less than schools—and in schools they
would get an additional allowance if they were dealing with the
difficult young people they are dealing with. So it is quite difficult.
The staff who have remained and have stuck with it are very committed,
but there is a fear that we will lose them if the contracting
period is run out over a long period.
Q281 Helen Jones: May I ask a quick follow-up
on that? In your view, which way is the best way for staff to
keep up with developments in their own field? If we want prison
education to be high quality and up to date, is there some advantage
in them teaching part of their time in other institutions as well,
or do you find there are ways of them keeping up with developments
even when they are teaching full-time in prison?
Ms Harding: We offer staff development
to all our staff, wherever they are based. So if they wish to
go on curriculum development specific to their vocational area,
basic skills, or general education, they can do that with general
education staff from the main site, who may be teaching adults
and young people. However, if there is specific work around prisoner
education, we would encourage staff to take part in that. There
is a very good national network which all the colleges are involved
in.
Ms Mitchell: We are very fortunate
in prisoner education: we have three strands. We tap into the
Prison Service mandatory training of prisoncraft; we can use the
college's main network, as you said—the mainstream—and
then we have networks where we have seminar groups, curricula
groups, for specific prison education curricula. In many ways,
therefore, we have a broader staff development programme for educators
in prison than we do in mainstream. We have started to take people
out of our college and to give them some of the education for
behavioural management for difficult students. I think that in
prison education we have a lot to offer mainstream as well.
Ms Ohsan: On the other hand, it
is not all contractors/providers who are able to spend the money
that the big providers are spending on staff development. We have
a number of reports that, in some areas, staff do not have access
to staff development; they are mainly part-time. The majority
of the staff in a lot of the education departments are part-time.
They do not get the same amount of pay when they go on their training
as they would do if they were full-time; so there is a disincentive.
Some of them do not work when the training is available, even
if it is being provided by the parent college with the contract.
So it is a mixture. There are some very good practices, which
certainly we support, and some which are not very good. We have
a difficulty, given the nature of contracting, in trying to have
that spread uniformly. Also, we should not forget the few private
providers. It is a totally different picture, which of course
does not apply to those.
Q282 Mr Chaytor: Is it better or worse?
Ms Ohsan: For some of them, we
do not know—or we know very little. We do have a rapport
with the colleges, because there is a history of industrial relations,
of contact, of working together. With some of the private providers
we just do not have that at all. Contact is nonexistent. One place
where we do have contact, it is just disaster after disaster—things
I cannot say here. However, it is a totally different picture—on
everything we have said. I do not think there would be any agreement
between that contractor and NATFHE, if we were to sit here together,
about the staff, about the provision, and everything else.
Q283 Chairman: So you think we should
bring some private providers in, to hear their side of the story?
Ms Ohsan: Yes, because there are
about four private providers, I think.
Dr Brennan: To be clear about
that, I think there are two private providers and two LEA services
that hold the other contracts which colleges do not hold. So there
are actually two that operate, I think—and private prisons.
Ms Mitchell: Can I clarify the
private prison sector? There are some which deliver their own
education in house. They do not contract out their education service.
UKDS is one of those providers. The old Group 4, which is now
GSL, has three prisons in the country: one at Altcourse in Liverpool;
one at The Wolds in Hull; and Rye Hill in Rugby. Although they
are a private prison, they do contract out their education to
our college, so it is a college provider—which has recently
meant that there is the standardisation of education services
across the Home Office and the private sector.
Mr Taubman: Could I bring up a
point about professional development and just look to the future?
We are in the process of getting a sector skills council for lifelong
learning, which will be dealing with colleges, universities, youth
work, et cetera. I think that there will be a criminal justice
sector skills council. Somehow we will need to bring those together.
To refer to some of the points made in the earlier session, about
the role of other prison staff, prison officers, et cetera, somehow
we need to get elements of training crossing over between prison
staff, prison education staff, and staff out in the community.
I am sure AoC and the colleges, and certainly NATFHE, will be
saying to the lifelong learning sector skills council that, once
they are up and running, offender education is something they
need to take into account.
Chairman: Can we turn now to the curriculum,
basic skills and vocational training? Kerry is going to lead us
on this.
Q284 Mr Pollard: Are we concentrating
too much on basic skill, perhaps to the detriment of vocational
education—bearing in mind that Toe by Toe reading
scheme we talking about earlier on, which seemed to be quite an
exciting venture?
Dr Brennan: I tried to say in
my opening remarks that there is that need to shift the emphasis,
and to see vocational learning as a vehicle for also tackling
basic skills issues. Perhaps my colleagues would like to comment
on it from an operational point of view.
Ms Harding: Outside the prison
sector we would normally provide integrated provision. So we would
provide basic skills education on the factory floor, in industry,
and in our vocational workshops. In some prisons that is working
well. In one of our largest prisons—Birmingham—we
have classes and teaching alongside the vocational training. However,
the targets are different in the different sectors. Prisoners
do not necessarily stay long enough in any one prison to be able
to get a formal vocational qualification. Hopefully some of the
national developments, like unitisation of the curriculum, will
help that. Certainly if we can get the tracking between prisons,
that would help; but of course not every prison offers the same
vocational area. Personally, my staff would like to see a much
closer tie-up in the new contracting round between the two, notwithstanding
all the difficulties in terms of contracts of employment, et cetera,
and all the other difficulties—because that is how we operate
outside.
Ms Mitchell: I have been a basic
skills tutor and, as an education manager in a prison, was appalled
at the idea of calling it "basic skills" or "foundation
studies" for adults who had failed. I had an education programme,
a curriculum, that did not have the words "basic skills"
anywhere on it. I was at Liverpool Prison, and we continued to
deliver the creative arts, parentcraft—any vocational area
that we could get the prison to deliver, we did—but our
accreditation was always the skills for life, the basic skills.
I think that a lot of good managers and good colleges delivered
the skills-for-life project through vocational areas. I am sure
you will agree that the last thing a basic skills student—if
we can call them that—wants is 30 hours in a classroom,
doing basic skills. They have failed once: we do not want to give
them more of the same. I really believe that we have to look to
the employability, the vocational areas, to look at what the offender
needs, wants, is going to use, and embed basic skills. That is
one thing we are good at, as educationists. I think that governors
were probably preoccupied with the outcome: it had to be level
2. It had to be a level 2 accreditation for key performance targets.
We have gone through a period where some governors insisted that
that was all that was taught; but there were ways of delivering
it. I have to mention that my saddest day was walking into a prison
and seeing on the door of a classroom "KPT class". I
went in and asked the people what were they learning and they
said, "KPT". They did not know what it was but they
knew the governor had to get KPTs—key performance targets.
In fact, they were doing English and maths, numeracy and literacy—because
that was the focus of education. Whether you needed KPT or not,
you were in it. Thank goodness, we are moving towards this broader
curriculum, this wider approach, but with the national skills
strategy at the very heart of it. that, We must establish the
underpinning knowledge to enable them to be eligible for work..
Mr Taubman: I echo everything
that has been said. Of course we recognise the need for basic
skills, for literacy and numeracy. The figures of those without
level 1 qualifications inside prison is absolutely appalling.
However, I would make a very strong plea for a broad curriculum.
We cannot live by bread alone. Art, culture, drama—some
of you will have seen, as I did, that TV film about opera in a
prison—these can give offenders a real hold on learning.
It can be there first significant piece of self-confidence. We
use these methods outside, in community education and adult education,
of trying to get people re-involved, re-engaged in learning, through
their interests—and I think that we can do so in prisons.
It is particularly important in terms of cultural studies. Again,
with the disproportionate number of black and ethnic minority
prisoners, black studies and ethnic minority studies can give
them a sense of pride in their race, in their ethnicity, which
can be a really important first step back to learning, back to
education.
Q285 Mr Pollard: Bobby Cummines said
earlier—and it was very powerful evidence that he gave—that
employability was the key to stopping recidivism. It strikes me,
therefore, that if we start by vocational training, it might unlock
interest in the basic skills. If you have to read a plan to build
something or other, suddenly you see the relevance of that. Is
that not a better way of approaching it, rather than doing the
KPT, or whatever it was you said earlier? That does not mean anything
to me, never mind anybody else, and we are supposed to know about
these things. Lastly, we were at one of the prisons on the Isle
of Wight a short time ago. They had a welding workshop there which
had been shut down for 18 months, perhaps even two years, because
they could not recruit a welder. That is a key skill with which
you could walk into dozens of jobs, wherever you have been before.
How do we get round that? How do we encourage people to say that
it is worthwhile to come into prison education?
Ms Harding: It is quite difficult
in some ways. A group of staff seem to take to it like a duck
to water and that is what they want to do; others do not. We have
to remember that we have national shortages in welding education.
Q286 Chairman: I remember that you could
not get many of them in Huddersfield.
Ms Harding: No, and we have trouble
with it in Dudley as well. Similarly, we have problems in construction
and plumbing—equally areas that would encourage people into
employment, because there are different levels of employment and
they could move through those. However, those are not the areas
which, as prison education contractors, we are in control of.
I think that having that as part of the education contract would
encourage people, because it would provide a career structure
within which it is not just a prison officer: there is an education
structure; there are jobs where we could move people in and out
of mainstream prison education, community education, for those
skill areas. That would be a way of encouraging people in, and
the pay rates would also probably be better than the training
rates.
Mr Taubman: Prison education lecturers
are the only staff in a prison who get no financial recognition
of the fact they work in prisons. Secretaries in prisons, who
have no contact with prison, get what is called an environment
allowance. Prison education staff do not. I have to say some prison
education staff are not even paid the same rates as outside, the
college. Not all, but some. So I think that pay and security would
go a long way.
Ms Ohsan: May I add to that, if
you are talking about the vocational instructors—which you
touched on before? There is an issue about vocational instructors
not coming into education, which is to do with their own qualifications,
and their feeling that they are not up to doing what the others
do. I think that is something which cannot be ignored. In the
same way as the earlier witnesses talked about prison officers
feeling that they do not want to be seen to be less qualified
or less able than their students, I think there is that dimension
to be looked at. It cannot be ignored in terms of recruiting.
Q287 Mr Pollard: We have talked about
the emphasis on prison education. Should we suggest that the prison
governor should be called "prison governor and director of
education"—so that we were setting the scene much better
than we are now? If you look at the hierarchy in a prison, you
see the governor, the assistant governor, and so on and, right
at the very end, is the head of prison education. It seems to
me that it is entirely the wrong way round. There is not enough
emphasis, and that would send out a signal, would it not?
Dr Brennan: It is a very nice
idea. One can see all sorts of reasons why people might not be
willing to take it up, but I think that it does emphasise the
importance of a change of culture, of a recognition of learning
as a key component of offender development within the prison environment.
If we could get to that, then the question of who carries the
title is perhaps less important.
Mr Taubman: I would like to see
prison education departments as learning centres for the whole
prison.
Q288 Valerie Davey: How do you feel that
the work you are doing, and the difficulties you have already
expressed about terms and conditions, fits in with the voluntary
sector work which we have just heard about in the earlier session?
How does this dovetail within a prison—or does it not?
Mr Taubman: I think that it should
complement what goes on in the prison. Teaching prisoners is a
skill. Teaching basic skills is a skill. Over the last five years,
the Government have put an enormous amount of resources and effort
into training basic skills—the Adult Basic Skills Strategy
Unit. I think that prisoners working with other prisoners, volunteering,
helping, can be an incredibly useful adjunct. In particular, the
voluntary sector has an enormous role in terms of resettlement,
and the transition from inside prison to back out in the community.
Q289 Valerie Davey: Who then oversees
how that is organised within a prison?
Ms Mitchell: The new role—and
I take your point about the governor also being the director of
education—has devolved that responsibility to his head of
learning and skills. I think the future will see that head of
learning and skills reporting directly to the governor and being
his or her education adviser. The head of learning and skills
has the responsibility of providing education, training and accreditation
to the whole prison regime, and bringing it together as a secure
learning college. I see the voluntary sector as a key part, alongside
Connections, Jobcentre Plus, the education department—we
are already working in partnerships. You asked about construction.
We are running a bakery project at Lindholme Prison, where City
College deliver the education but Thomas Danby College in Leeds—the
bakery specialists—send out their bakers, their tutors.
It is a partnership approach where each person, with their core
specialisms, can supply and serve that prison, under the auspices
of the head of learning and skills, to give a quality product.
We cannot be jealous of our own patch. We have to share and give
the best quality across the board.
Q290 Chairman: They are very emollient
answers, Merron, but is it not a fact that, if you were doing
your job properly, you would not need enthusiastic amateurs to
come in and teach reading?
Ms Mitchell: I hope that we can
teach people to read in prisons. We do have Link Up schemes where
we train mentors—prison staff, and volunteers, working alongside
education staff. I think the Toe by Toe stands on its own
merit. That is supplementary to, and has the enthusiasm of, the
voluntary sector. We all will need the voluntary sector, but we
cannot devolve our responsibility to the voluntary sector. We
still have to be accountable and get outcomes for teaching people
to read and have the social skills to resettle.
Q291 Jeff Ennis: Supplementary to the
question that Val has just asked, is there any evidence, other
than anecdotal evidence, that where you have a very active and
viable charity organisation, such as the Shannon Trust or the
Dialogue Trust, working in a prison, that improves the educational
outputs that you people deliver in that particular prison establishment?
Ms Mitchell: I think only through
the ALI-Ofsted reports, where you get a report on the whole of
the prison. I think you will find more interventions of the voluntary,
and education, and employer. Employers now play a big part. Certainly
at City College we are an employer of prison education and, where
we can, we take people on to the staff. I think probably more
involvement from communities—but I do not have that evidence,
except reading the Chief Inspector's reports.
Q292 Chairman: Do any of you know of
work that is to be done on a kind of education audit of a prison,
top to bottom? Quality of the educational managers, prison officers—the
whole shebang—has anyone done that?
Ms Mitchell: The Chief Inspector
does that. The ALI-Ofsted team go into a prison with the Chief
Inspector, and the report is overarching of all services within
the prison. Education, training and skills—whether it be
by a contractor in education or by any other provider—are
commented on and graded.
Q293 Mr Gibb: I wondered if we had a
figure for the proportion of prisoners who leave prison without
basic skills.
Ms Mitchell: The Offender Learning
and Skills Unit would be the body who would collate that information.
We send every piece of data on individual accreditations, on a
monthly basis, to the Offender Learning and Skills Unit. They
collate that data and they would have it.
Q294 Mr Gibb: We know that between 60
and 70% enter prison lacking the basic skills. Do any of you four,
as the experts in this field, have any feel for what proportion
leave prison? Would it be the same or less? If less, how much
less?
Ms Mitchell: I would have to give
that back as supplementary evidence, when I have found the details.
We would like to hope, in our optimism, that we do make some route
to progression, if not accreditation: that there is progression,
whether that is the soft targets—
Q295 Mr Gibb: You have no idea?
Ms Mitchell: No.
Q296 Mr Gibb: I am slightly surprised,
given all we have been saying about prison education, that you
do not have a feel for how successful it is at the moment.
Ms Harding: I think we have to
remember that not all prisoners come to the education units. A
large proportion do not, partly because of the finance issues
that have been previously mentioned. I think that our own retention
in prison education is probably higher than in mainstream colleges.
Once students come, they get hooked to it and they do like to
stay. They definitely see it as they have had their privileges
withdrawn if they are not allowed to attend the education classes.
However, it is such a small proportion of the prison population,
unfortunately.
Q297 Mr Gibb: So you are saying that
you think probably quite a high proportion of prisoners leave
prison without the basic skills?
Ms Harding: Yes.
Mr Taubman: To add to the technical
difficulties, I do not think there is any tracking of individual
prisoners in this respect. So that if you get transferred from
one prison to another, you could do the same thing twice in two
different prisons and appear twice in the statistics of successes,
but actually only one individual is involved. I think that there
are therefore some real problems about the adequacy of the data
collection systems in all of this. I am certainly not aware of
any systematic survey evidence which would answer the question
that you have asked.
Q298 Mr Gibb: Do you think we should
have that?
Mr Taubman: I think that it is
part of this process of having a better grasp of the totality
of the service which is being offered—better tracking systems,
better information about exactly what the outputs are, and how
that addresses the wide range of needs that you describe.
Q299 Mr Gibb: Do you know, if we were
to go round every prison this week, every class, how many lessons
in maths calculus we would find being taught?
Ms Harding: The odd one or two.
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