Examination of Witnesses (Questions 558-559)
17 NOVEMBER 2004
MR PHIL
WHEATLEY, MR
MARTIN NAREY
AND MS
SUSAN PEMBER
OBE
Q558 Chairman: Good morning everyone.
Can I welcome Martin Narey, Susan Pember and Phil Wheatley to
our deliberations. You know that we are now well on course in
our evidence sessions on prison education. We are very grateful
that such a distinguished group of people have given us their
time this morning to answer some of our questions. Can I start,
Martin Narey, by asking you to open up and tell us a little of
what you think prison education is and what its purpose is?
Mr Narey: Thank you, Mr Chairman.
I am delighted to have the opportunity. Can I say I am delighted
that the Committee has picked up the subject of prison education
so early in your jurisdiction for this subject. As you would expect,
I have read with some interest some of the evidence that has previously
been given to you. I think in one or two circumstances you might
have been given a picture which is undeservedly bleak, so, if
I may, I would like to say something about prison education but
also the background in which it takes place. If I may start on
the background, the pressures on the prison system remain very
considerable. We have this morning close to a record population.
There are 16,000 individuals living in overcrowded conditions,
conditions which we consider to be gross. There are far too many
short-term prisoners, many of them being sent to custody in circumstances
where they would never have been sent to custody 10 years ago,
and the overwhelming numbers mean that Phil and the staff need
to frequently move prisoners up and down the country during their
sentence to wherever there is an empty bed. Despite those pressures,
and accepting absolutely that there is much we need to do to improve
the prison service, I think we have a better run, a more constructive,
a more cost effective and a much more humane prison system that
ever before. I know that some of you will remember the 1980s and
1990s, which were characterised by major prison disturbances,
riots, notorious escapes and, in some prisons, inhumane treatment.
In the mid 1990s there were four or five escapes from prison every
week; last year there were only five in the whole year. There
were about two major prison disturbances every year through most
of the 1990s; and there have been two since 1997. In 1998 there
were only nine prisons with drug treatment; soon there will be
more than 100. In education terms, investment in education fell
in real terms during the 1990s as the service concentrated on
security and good order, but since 1998 investment has grown very
sharply from about £36 million dedicated to adult education
in 1997-98 to about £82 million this year. There are lots
of things we need to improve. We need to improve the quality of
teaching, and I am particularly grateful for the support of Ofsted
and ALI in helping us to do that; we need to do much more to integrate
work skills training with classroom and basic education; we need
to get more prisoners into classes and deliver them on time and
find ways of them spending more time there; but I am very proud
that in difficult circumstances, with individuals who are generally
being excluded from schools or excluded themselves, we are likely
to achieve 60,000 basic skills qualifications this year and more
than 100,000 work skills qualifications. Additionally, we have
almost 1,000 Open University students in prison, about 2,500 individuals
doing other distance learning financed by the Prisoners' Education
Trust, about 600 prisoners studying every day on day-release,
about 20 writing residents schemes and a flourishing artistic
curriculum, culminating in the stunning Koestler Exhibition of
prisoner writing and art every year. Whilst we are aware of the
improvements that need to be made, and we will look with real
interest at the recommendations that the Committee makes, I think
it is remarkable that in extremely difficult circumstances 13%
of the Government Skills for Life target up to 2004 (94,000 of
the 750,000 targeted) has been achieved by prisoners in custody.
What we hope to do in the next few years in this new partnership
of the DfES with the Learning Skills Councils is to put education
even more at the heart of an offender's experience, whether they
are in custody or in the community, because we are convinced that
that is the way to increase employability and to reduce crime.
Q559 Chairman: Martin, thank you very
much for that. Susan, would you like to say something?
Ms Pember: Only to add, my role
in the DfES is to manage the prison education, and what we are
doing in the Department is concentrating on three main areas.
The first area is delivering relevant programmes of good quality.
As Martin has said, in basic skills particularly we have very
much seen success in the last few years, but we know that quality
is an important angle. The Adult Learning Inspectorate has done
some excellent work recently, pointing out where our priorities
should lay. So improving quality is our second most important
goal. Our third goal is to determine a new service which is fit
for the 21st century that builds on the good work that we have
already done in prisons, but it has to be a seamless service that
goes from the offender in a secure environment to the offender
in the community on to probation and then either into full-time
employment or into full-time education and the education service
or training service that we want to provide follows that offender/earner
through that journey.
Mr Wheatley: I do not think there
is much I should add to that other than to say that the Prison
Service certainly welcomes the partnership with DfES, not only
because it has brought more money to enable us to provide better
education, but because it has brought in new thinking and the
chance to organise better and to make prison a more positive experience,
because this gives a much greater variety of activity which prisoners
can use which will help reduce re-offending. At the same time
we have got to do all the other things that Martin spoke about
to keep a system which is running under considerable pressure
but is running successfully at the moment coping with a large
population, maintaining security, maintaining order and hitting
the many targets we have got.
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