Examination of Witnesses (Questions 660-679)
17 NOVEMBER 2004
MR PHIL
WHEATLEY, MR
MARTIN NAREY
AND MS
SUSAN PEMBER
OBE
Q660 Chairman: When will the new contract
range have been put in place?
Ms Pember: We are evidencing work
from the prototypes to see if we can have a different type of
contract arrangement and we will look at which one is most appropriate
and that is what we will run out in 2006.
Q661 Chairman: Where are the prototypes
being rolled out?
Ms Pember: The prototypes are
being rolled out in the North East, North West and the South West.
Chairman: We must press on with education
provision.
Q662 Valerie Davey: In Bristol at the
moment, we are just having the assessment of a scheme for targeting
prolific offenders and, in that case, probation, police and the
prison have come together, magnificently I believe, to target
the 20% of offenders who are causing 80% of the crime and, in
that way, really homing in on individual prisoners. I would extrapolate
perhaps from the conversation but, in health, we are looking at
individuals, so whether they are diabetic or whether they have
a drugs problem or whatever, and perhaps in education we should
be doing that more to look at whether a younger or older person
is still dyslexic and has all those problems or whether they have
very special needs. My first question is to Susan: in that first
assessment, do you actually have people sufficiently qualified
across the whole country to be doing an assessment at the level
and in the depth that is necessary?
Ms Pember: That is one of our
goals. We have trained up people right across the country now
to do early screening in order that they can identify straightaway
if somebody has a literacy or numeracy problem. Then we have instituted
something that we call a diagnostic assessment to see how severe
their problem is and, from that, you can lead off a pathway to
see whether they are dyslexic or they have some other form of
specific learning difficulty. Our goal is to make sure that there
are people trained up in each of the services or they can signpost
to somebody who can do that for them and, once we have that individual
diagnostic assessment of the individual, it transfers with them
and we have an individual learning plan that goes with them and
exactly what you were talking about with the joint project between
probation and the police, we would want the learning and skills
council to be in that from day one in order that we can actually
help that individual and that is the learning plan that goes with
them.
Q663 Valerie Davey: So, under the new
contracts, whenever they are finally let, that initial assessment
would be a crucial element of it.
Ms Pember: Yes.
Q664 Valerie Davey: Secondly, the facility
to follow through for those individuals to meet their special
needs where they are seen.
Ms Pember: Yes.
Q665 Valerie Davey: Martin mentioned
the additional funding which has come into the system which you
are obviously pleased about. How have you prioritised the spending
of that money within the education development?
Mr Narey: When the money began
to arrive in 1998, we agreed with ministers an educational strategy
for prisons with an emphasis on basic skills and essentially we
put almost all the new money into basic skills provision and we
redirected some of the money which had been spent elsewhere on
education also into basic skills because the primary mover on
this—and I do not know whether you have seen the survey—is
Alan Wells of the Basic Skills Agency who was very much a friend
and supporter to us in that period told us that, from a survey
carried out by the Basic Skills Agency, the overwhelming problem
in the prison population was that two thirds of them were essentially
ineligible for about 97% of jobs advertised in job centres. So,
we do other things as well, as I mentioned at the beginning—sometimes
people believe that we do nothing and that is not the case—but,
overwhelmingly, we concentrate on the barriers to employability,
so basic skills primarily.
Q666 Valerie Davey: Is the money that
we are talking about all revenue or is there a capital element
or is that separate?
Mr Narey: The figures I reported
to you for adult offenders were entirely resource money. There
has been also significant capital investment in the establishment
of facilities for children. Most of them have had, for example,
new educational blocks and we had a lot of money from the capital
investment fund to improve education facilities in some adult
prisons as well
Q667 Valerie Davey: Is the revenue—and
let us concentrate on the revenue—leading to more prisoners
getting education or is it leading to the depth of quality which
some prisoners on basic skills really need? What is happening?
Where is it going?
Mr Narey: It is leading to both
as demonstrated by the statistics which I quoted you. There are
very many more individuals in education: 39% of prisoners at the
moment have some sort of participation in education. I would estimate
that, five or seven years ago, that would have been in single
figures. Also, the depth of education is much more. Before I did
Phil's job, before I became Director General, I was responsible
for education on the Prisons Board and, in 1997-98 when I looked
at education, I found that we had hardly any outputs at all in
terms of making any effect on individuals. There were still quite
a few people in education but most of that education was largely
recreational and, in terms of doing anything to change their life
chances, there were hardly any. We now have these huge amount
of progress and very significant levels of qualification in prison.
Q668 Valerie Davey: One of the ways that
would take this forward massively would be if prisoners could
use the Internet. We did find in Norway that, for the first time,
they had found a way of screening in order that it was educational
provision by the network. Are we going to be able to develop through
the Internet levels in attainments of education which would obviously
take this forward amazingly for many, many prisoners?
Mr Narey: The short answer to
that is "yes". We are already giving prisoners access
to the Internet in some establishments. We are being very, very
careful. Both Phil and I will have truncated careers if we have
individuals in prison who are getting access to paedophilia and
matters such as that and also have truncated careers if victims
are finding themselves being contacted through the net. So, we
are taking it very carefully. A number of establishments have
already done this and work which we are doing in partnership with
the DfES I am confident will open up access to limited sites in
a controlled way. I can tell you that the Home Secretary will
want to be very convinced that we can be absolutely sure that
the firewalls and everything that we can put in can work. If anyone
has had the experience that I have of a 15-year old at home, you
will notice how people can get round things unless you are really
sophisticated and we must be very, very careful.
Q669 Chairman: There is good international
experience now in the United States, Norway and other places that
is showing that it can be done.
Mr Narey: Indeed and we have not
been ignoring it. Until very recently, with Learn Direct, we used
the Learn Direct Intranet, CD-based learning, and that has been
of variable success but I think it is accepted that we need to
go further though I just want to be absolutely sure and Phil and
I will want to convince the Home Secretary that this is not going
to cause public embarrassment.
Valerie Davey: I am sure this Committee
would endorse everything you have said provided we know that there
is also at the same time exploration of what will be for many
people in the future, I am sure, something of very great value.
Q670 Mr Chaytor: Just returning to the
question of the emphasis on basic skills training, one of the
Government's new policies for adult skills as a whole is the Level
2 entitlement which will give free tuition for Level 2 courses
for all adults who do not have it. What are the implications of
that for prisoner education? Will offenders both within prisons
and on release be eligible for Level 2 entitlement and what are
the implications for your budgets if the whole budget has been
skewed towards basic skills training over the last few years?
Ms Pember: The Level 2 has been
piloted in two geographical areas of the learning skills council
as we speak and it is an expectation that it will be rolled out
next year and that is exactly what the new service has to cover
especially for those who are going to serve their sentence in
the community because they will be entitled to free Level 2 training
and that is the funding that Martin was saying that offenders
need to get access to. So, yes, there will be a priority group
there. For the work that we have been doing on basic skills, we
have been getting ready for the launch of the Level 2 entitlement
because if you are an individual who has luggage of the past about
school, you actually do not really want to do basic skills. We
have had to do a great deal of persuasion nationally in prisons
and outside of prisons for people to take the basic skills tuition
up but they do actually want to get Level 2 qualification. So,
the work that we have been doing is to secure materials that embed
literacy and numeracy in the level 2 activity in order that it
is cost effective because you are doing the two at once. However,
it does mean more training for the individuals who are actually
teaching this activity and that is the work that we have to do
for the future.
Q671 Chairman: That is one of the problems
though, is it not? I know that you are very highly respected people
in this field and we are learning a great deal from this, but
what worries me about some of the answers we are getting is that
they do not really square with the rest of the evidence we have
had. You have read some of the transcripts presumably. Some of
the evidence we have been given from real prisons, governors in
prisons and people working in prisons, say that the situation
is much less coherent and less satisfactory than you seem to be
suggesting and they say they are really struggling. One of the
things they are struggling with is in regard to the quality of
competencies available to them in a prison. I think, Martin, it
was you who cut down the training period for a prison officer
to something like six or seven weeks. In the Scandinavian countries
we visited, it is a year. You have a churn of prison officers
which is horrific.
Mr Narey: No, we certainly do
not, Chairman.
Q672 Chairman: Just wait a minute. That
is what we hear. There is low-level qualification amongst prison
officers themselves. So, to be able to train them up to be part
of a learning environment seems to be challenging. Secondly, the
people running the workshops are much lower educated then we would
hope they would be. Thirdly, even the teachers themselves have
pretty rusty skills that need upgrading. That is what we are hearing.
The three of you seem to be saying, "Chairman and Committee,
come on, don't believe all those voices, everything is all right."
Is that not what you are saying?
Mr Narey: Chairman, the reason
I made the opening statement that I did was because I did spend
last night reading some of the transcripts and some of them frankly
horrified me. I thought they were misleading.
Q673 Chairman: And even your friends.
Mr Narey: I do not mind saying
publicly that I was horrified by what one of them, someone who
I greatly admire, Mike Newell, the Governor of Durham, who has
been a friend of mine for 20 years, had to say and I think he
is quite wrong. I would simply urge you to speak to as many governors
as possible. I am delighted that you are going to visit a prison
and I would urge you to call governors at random. Governors are
committed to this and they have a grip on this. We could not possibly
be producing the qualifications that we are if this were not being
taken seriously.
Q674 Chairman: Martin, come back to that
one thing: do you really think that six/seven weeks of training
for a prison officer is enough, with no qualifications?
Mr Narey: This is Mr Wheatley's
business now. I am not backing out and I will happily come back
to it but I should let Phil speak to this.
Mr Wheatley: It is actually eight
weeks of training; it used to be 11 weeks of training. The part
of training we removed was primarily the fitness training because
we used to do lots of PE with staff and drill which we seemed
at one point to think was good for prison officers. Actually,
because we are recruiting people following a fitness test, we
know they are fit and we do not need to make them super fit just
in training, it does not make any sense, and we thought that the
drill added nothing to the learning and we were able to take those
things out and leave the real training of a prison officer intact
without reducing any of that training. It is eight weeks of training;
it is not as long as they do in Scandinavia but it gives prison
officers the basics of training to take out in order that they
can begin to do their job and a great deal of the learning is
intended to be done on the job. It is part of the probation period
and further training is done with prison officers. On average,
we are doing about six days of training per member of staff and
we keep on trying to improve the skills of our staff.
Q675 Chairman: There are those who have
said to us, "Look, they are having a short training period
and they never get any more training except training in restraint".
Mr Wheatley: That simply is not
true. You are right, they do get training in restraint and it
is very important that they do, actually.
Q676 Chairman: But nothing else?
Mr Wheatley: They get training
in suicide, they get training in diversity, they get training
for specific jobs for staff. If they go into reception and into
observation and classification work, they get trained for that.
This is not to say that every prison officer is spending most
of their time in training but there is further training for staff
and there has to be to make the prisons work. Similarly, when
somebody says there is a high resignation rate, actually, there
is a 2.2% resignation rate for reasons other than retirement in
prison officers. That is tremendously low. It is a problem to
me sometimes that actually the rate at which staff churn, to use
that phrase again, is very low which makes coping with any budget
reductions difficult because actually staff do not leave in very
large numbers. So, the idea that we have an enormous churn of
prison officers, heaven knows where that came from but it is not
reality. It has been—and I have the figures in front of
me—round about 2.2% since March 2002 which is where my figures
go back to. It has been as low as 2.1% and no higher than 2.2%,
which is what it currently is.
Q677 Chairman: That is very interesting
compared to the other information we have been given.
Mr Wheatley: I suspect that you
have not been told the truth.
Chairman: We will now move on to key
performance targets.
Q678 Paul Holmes: In a way, it is carrying
on from the theme we have just been talking about regarding the
possible gaps between perception and reality between the official
figures and what is actually going on. People would say that performance
targets can be very useful for driving up performance and for
measuring success and people would also say that there can be
quite a false image of what is happening as well. As somebody
who was a teacher for a long time, I can give you chapter and
verse on how schools manipulate information in order that they
hit the targets and I was speaking to somebody yesterday who works
in the Accident & Emergency Department at my local hospital
who was complaining about the very distorting effect of the four
hour waiting list target on A&E provision. I think there is
a set of examples like that from the Prison Service. We have heard
a great deal from Phil and Martin regarding the success rates
they have. They are getting more prisoners into education through
basic skills etcetera, etcetera. The Prison Reform Trust has said
that the achievement of targets in basic skills masks very significant
shortcomings and the opportunities for learning available to all
prisoners across the board. How do you reconcile that?
Mr Narey: I read the evidence
from Juliet Lyon and I am afraid that I think it was partial.
She did not tell you about the numbers of students doing Open
University work; she did not tell you the number of people doing
distance learning funded through the Prison Education Trust which
we fund in the first place; she did not mention people on day
release. It is simply not the case that this is only basic skills.
It is primarily basic skills because it is the greatest challenge
we face but there is a great deal of other education as well.
I do not know if any of you ever get to see the annual Koestler
event launched recently at Wormwood Scrubs to which I went a few
weeks ago. That is just a representation of what prisoners are
achieving in the arts. We have 20 writer-in-residence schemes.
There is a great deal more than basic skills. It is true and we
are not ashamed to say that basic skills remains a priority because
that is the best possible way that we might reduce criminality.
Q679 Paul Holmes: Is it still reaching
the majority. I think Phil was saying earlier on that there is
no problem about prisoners getting access to education, there
is no problem about them being able to earn more money for phone
cards by doing work rather than undergoing education and yet we
have been told, both in the prisons we visited and by evidence
we have been given, that there are actually big barriers to prisoners.
The money factor is a big barrier because, if it is the only source
of money for cigarettes and phone cards, they will go and do the
work, as boring and repetitive as it is, that pays them slightly
more. We have heard that a number of prisoners cannot get access
to education courses because there are not the spaces for them.
Martin, you yourself said that about 35% are in education which
means that 65% are not.
Mr Wheatley: I certainly would
not claim that every prisoner who wants to have education will
have as much education as they would like to have. What we have
is much greater resources than we used to have, primarily targeted
on basic skills, which we are trying to make sure that we use
to maximum effect. We are certainly well short of resourcing for
every prisoner who wanted to do education and many do for the
reasons I set out earlier and they are not bad reasons, prisoners
want to improve themselves in prison. If we set out to achieve
that, that would cost the country a great deal more money and,
at the moment, that is not being allocated to us in that way.
I think trying to hit a standard in which we met absolutely the
express needs of every prisoner would be quite difficult to defend.
There will be some prisoners who have basic skills problems who
are not motivated to attack those problems as I think we have
brought out already and you have to be motivated to attack those
problems. We are filling the educational places for which we have
funding for people who have skills deficits with which we are
managing to deal. I am not trying to say that this is perfection
but I am saying that we are using the resources to good effect
to do what we are meant to be doing and the results show that
60,000 basic skills qualifications this year will be a substantial
improvement on the previous year. It is pretty good going. It
is a large percentage of the Government's overall target. I think
we are using the resources to good effect, not that governors
are not finding the role difficult as they cope with lots of pressures
on them and not that prisoners are getting everything that they
want because they are not.
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