Examination of Witnesses (Questions 720-739)
6 DECEMBER 2004
MS CAROLINE
NEVILLE, MR
JOHN GAMBLE,
MRS JANICE
SHINER AND
MR CHRIS
BARNHAM
Q720 Jeff Ennis: How does that sit with
the very short training period that we give officers in this country
compared with some of the Western European examples we have looked
at?
Mrs Shiner: That is probably for
Martin Narey and Phil Wheatley to respond to.
Q721 Jeff Ennis: I would like to get
your view on that as well.
Mrs Shiner: I am not an expert
on the training of prison officers but what I do know is through
our own staff development, continuous development, initial teacher
training arrangements that we have in place for teachers in further
education, the intention is as we revise those, and we have got
a new set of proposals for initial teacher training, training
officers in the Prison Service can have access to that training.
Therefore, there will be opportunities for them to improve their
understanding of the learning that is going on and understanding
some of the training needs of that individual. That is not a full
answer and I accept that.
Q722 Chairman: Are you not doing a bit
of buck passing in the sense that we have taken a lot of evidence,
including from Her Majesty's Inspector who says that once they
do the seven weeks there is no particular training for prison
officers except in restraint? Surely we should be looking at that
or is it that you are used to comfortably dealing with the NUT
and NASUWT and the Probation Service, the professional organisation,
and the Prison Officers' Association are too much for you, that
is what is holding all this up, that you have very strong unions
that delayed NOMS and will not allow you to educate the prison
officers? Is that what is wrong?
Mrs Shiner: I suppose what I was
saying was we will create the opportunity for them to access that
training and maybe that has not been so obvious in the past.
Q723 Chairman: That is part of the plan?
Mrs Shiner: Yes. Chris, do you
want to say anything more?
Mr Barnham: This is on slightly
a different point. The picture is not as grim as it is sometimes
painted.
Q724 Chairman: It is pretty grim when
you see the percentage of people who get any education in prisons.
Mr Barnham: I am talking about
involvement of prison officers in education. I can think of particular
examples. We have had specific funding for a thing called the
Prisons' ICT Academy, which is all about using IT for learning.
There are various examples of that. I went to a prison on the
Isle of Sheppey where it is run by prison officers themselves,
the educational contractor has no involvement in that, and it
is one of the most impressive bits of learning I have ever seen
in a prison. It is not the case that prison officers do not get
involved and cannot get involved, but it is certainly true that
what we have had in the past is an unhelpful division because
we have contracted out the education service and, for example,
we have had vocational training run by prison officers who have
got particular skills. One of the things that REX would have done,
one of the things that the new service will do, is bring those
two things together.
Q725 Chairman: Are you sure that is true?
Mr Barnham: That is true.
Q726 Chairman: It is going to be seamless?
Mr Barnham: Vocational training
will be included as part of the overall service. Either it will
be done by providers who are contracted by the LSC or it may continue
to be provided within the Prison Service. We are not adopting
a one-size-fits-all approach; it is quite possible that the Prison
Service itself will be an LSC provider as long as they meet the
requirements.
Q727 Helen Jones: Mrs Shiner, I am very
worried by what you have been saying to us. I would like to highlight
something we have found throughout this inquiry, that various
people giving us evidence may have the best of intentions but
actually no-one has control over the whole system. You may say,
"Yes, we would like prison officers to participate, we may
make the training available for them", but no-one is actually
saying what training should be required because that is not your
responsibility, that is a different department's responsibility.
Is not the whole problem with this that there is no-one in overall
charge of the prison education system, it is split everywhere,
and people in front us, the LSC, yourself, may have the best of
intentions but no-one has got a grip on the whole thing?
Mrs Shiner: Currently the person
responsible for prison education is the governor because the education
manager in the prison would report to the governor. They may well
report to the Head of Learning and Skills and then to the governor,
but currently the governing governor is responsible for education.
In fact, they are given targets and Phil Wheatley would hold them
accountable for those targets. Currently, it is pretty straightforward
and direct: the education manager would deliver the contract on
behalf of the provider and the establishment of the Heads of Learning
and Skills is there to bring together that education contract
and the vocational training within the prison under one umbrella
reporting to the governing governor.
Q728 Helen Jones: That is a very interesting
answer but, again, it is sending the responsibility downwards.
As a Committee, our concern is who has got a grip on this in Government
because Government sets the policy. It is all very well you saying
to us that prison officers should do this and it would be very
nice if they did this, but there is not a way of making sure that
comes about, is there?
Mrs Shiner: I misunderstood your
question. I was trying to give the answer as to what happens in
the prison. In Government, it is split and you are right to state
that. It is split with the Department for Education and Skills,
and I am the person responsible for setting the policy for education
in terms of both custodial and non-custodial, both prison and
probation, and for ensuring the implementation of that policy
in terms of the education policy, but we have to—and should—work
in partnership with our Home Office colleagues because they control
the Prison Service and the Probation Service. By working together,
we need to be clear about the policy that we want to implement
and then to use the levers that are available to us to make that
happen. We meet very regularly and we have a governance structure
in place to make that happen. A very good example would be how
we introduced e-learning into the Prison Service. On the one hand,
clearly there are issues about security and access and all of
those things that are well rehearsed, and, on the other hand,
from an educational perspective we are saying if we want to increase
the three to four hours, seven hours, whatever it is that prisoners
have in learning, we need to be able to introduce ICT. If we want
to be able to avoid prisoners being over-assessed and their information
travelling with them, we need to have ICT. Together, the Home
Office would pull the levers they have throughout their own line
management structure and I would do the same by the way we
are looking to the LSC to take this future plan forward. That
is the Government's arrangement. Martin Narey chairs a committee
called the Reducing Reoffenders Committee, where I sit representing
education, and there are people representing housing, drugs rehabilitation,
etcetera. A member of my staff, a director, chairs a joint committee
with Jobcentre Plus on education and employment. They are held
accountable by Martin Narey's umbrella committee. The governance
structures are well established and work well. It is part of how
a lot of Government is working where a lot of the policies we
have cross more than one department and, therefore, the key is
to find the right governance structures to ensure that you can
deliver.
Helen Jones: I am still not convinced
but I know that one of my colleagues is waiting to get in.
Q729 Chairman: The fact is that the Prison
Board—we will be asking the Ministers about this later—has
a health representative but does not have an education representative.
When the governing governor of Durham was here, he told us two
things: one, that he would not have an education person on the
top managing committee of the prison; two, other evidence says
governors are only going to be there for 18 months on average,
so do not expect them to be a consistent thread.
Mrs Shiner: On the Prison Board
there is Peter Wrench, who has the education brief, so he is our
point of reference for that.
Q730 Chairman: Our information is there
is a designated health person on the Prison Board but not a designated
education person. Has he got other things to do?
Mrs Shiner: There is not a designated
person but there is somebody from the Prison Service, Peter Wrench.
Mr Barnham: He is the Director
for Resettlement. In terms of the way the Offenders' Learning
and Skills Unit works, which I head in the Department for Education
and Skills, I report to Peter Wrench for education in the Prison
Service as our route into Phil Wheatley's board. He has a regular
report on education issues which comes from us.
Mrs Shiner: You are right, not
all of the Heads of Learning and Skills are sitting on the senior
management team. We will work very hard to make that happen because
the evidence is clear that they are part of the management team
and it is a more effective organisation.
Q731 Mr Gibb: This is more of a funding
issue. Can I just ask, is the DfES to fully properly fund prison
education?
Mrs Shiner: Is it committed to
fully funding?
Q732 Mr Gibb: Properly funding.
Mrs Shiner: Yes, within the constraints
of a budget that is pulled in a whole range of different ways.
The budget has gone up and it will continue to increase.
Q733 Mr Gibb: How much is it?
Mrs Shiner: It has gone up from
£93 million to £127 million, is that right?
Mr Barnham: From £97 million
in 2003-04 to £136 million this year and going up again next
year to £152 million. That covers offenders in the community
as well, although that is a small part of it.
Mrs Shiner: I was taking that
bit off. Are we committed to spending that money on prison probation?
Yes, we are.
Q734 Mr Gibb: You said three or four
hours a week in the classroom, which is roughly what we have been
hearing, or a couple of hours more maybe. Is that enough?
Mrs Shiner: No, it cannot possibly
be enough, particularly when you think of the skills gap for the
prison population. It is a significant step on from where it was,
and it needs to move on, but it needs to increase, not necessarily
by having people sitting in a classroom with a tutor, we need
to extend the learning opportunities through a whole range of
other ways.
Q735 Mr Gibb: You keep saying this and
yet, on the one hand, you say prison officers should be part of
this and then you say nothing about their training, it is not
your responsibility, but you are the one saying this is going
to be the future. Are you there just to craft the words for ministers
or are you in charge of running something?
Mrs Shiner: I did not say that
I did not know anything about it, I said I did not know as much
as others.
Chairman: Quite right.
Q736 Mr Gibb: You are the one advocating
this as the future for education.
Mrs Shiner: You are absolutely
right. You are right to challenge me and I will respond. In mainstream
further education you will have learners with a whole range of
demands on their time, either domestic, work, illness, whatever
it happens to be, so further education has become a very flexible
service. If somebody cannot come on a Tuesday morning because
they cannot get childcare there is probably some ICT related activity
that they can pick up to take that class, or they may well move
away from the area and study in a distant learning way, or there
may be a tutorial system using ICT which helps them to learn.
There is a whole range of ways. It may be that they have one-to-one
tutorials once a month to keep them on track and attend large
lectures for the rest of the time.
Q737 Mr Gibb: You are in charge of the
policy, what is the number of hours a week prisoners are going
to have in the classroom, for instance? That is the first question.
What is the numbers of hours a week they are going to have using
ICT distance learning?
Mrs Shiner: I do not think I can
be as precise as the number of hours. The answer to the first
question is we want to be able to increase those hours, but not
necessarily for everybody, for those who need it most. That must
be the first point. Until we have in place really robust assessment
and diagnosis we will not be able to determine that. We have to
get that in place first and then we can determine whether somebody
needs 10 hours or whatever it happens to be. The point I am making,
and clearly not very well, is that learners have a lot of time
at their disposal when they are in custody that could be used
to much better effect. They could be working on distance learning
materials, they could be using CD-Roms, they could be using the
Internet with all the necessary security controls in place. The
point I was making about prison officers was when prisoners are
in the cells or on the wings, it is the prison officer who is
there with them and for them to be given an opportunity to understand
the learning programme that prisoner is on and to support them
where they can would be very—
Q738 Mr Gibb: You are right, they do
have a lot of hours. Combine the two together, hours in front
of a tutor plus hours in front of the computer per week, on average,
what are we looking at as an objective?
Mrs Shiner: I think you have to
say the objective is to give them as much as you possibly can.
What is the limit? They will be spending some time at work, they
will be spending some time on other activities. In theory, they
could spend a vast amount of their time managing their own learning
once they are motivated and once they have got basic skills in
order to be able to do that, which is why getting basic skills
is so important.
Mr Barnham: Could I just add to
that. One of the best examples I saw very early in this job was
when I visited Leeds Prison and I was lucky enough to have lunch
there. The primary purpose of everybody working in the kitchens
at Leeds is to produce the meals that the prison needs, but many
of them are receiving on-the-job training and are achieving qualifications
in catering. From our budget in the DfES I do not think we are
paying for that through the mainstream education funding but it
is one of the benefits of having a Head of Learning and Skills
who is looking across the whole regime and asking "Where
are the learning opportunities?", many of which are outside
the classroom and can be achieved on the job in doing things that
people would otherwise be doing. It is quite hard for us to say
how many hours of learning have gone into that because people
have been doing other things, but we know the qualifications that
get achieved and the positive outcomes.
Q739 Mr Gibb: I get the impression that
the thinking going on is at quite an early stage in terms of the
policy development in this.
Mrs Shiner: No. The whole move
towards the funding and planning by the LSC is to enable us to
put these things in place because we need part of that mainstream
activity to support it. The development of e-learning within prisons
is at an early stage but it is on a very clear trajectory to have
that in place. The opportunity to be able to have new commissioning
from providers where we ask them to provide learning in that way
is also part of the thinking, it is all of a piece.
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