Examination of Witnesses (Questions 897-899)
8 FEBRUARY 2005
MS ANNE
LOVEDAY, MR
DAYO ADEAGBO,
MS JANE
BIRCH, MR
VIC PMOEROY,
MR PETER
BLUNT AND
MS FIONA
DUNSDON
Q897 Chairman: Welcome everyone to this
session. You probably know that I am the late arrived Chairman
of the Committee. The Chairmen of all Committees interview the
Prime Minister for two and a half hours every six months and that
is the duty I had this morning, so apologies for my late arrival.
The team has been having a really good visit and in the last hour
we have got straight into our formal interviews. It is very unusual
for the Select Committee to hold formal interviews outside of
the House of Commons. It is a great pleasure to be here doing
so at Feltham, especially, as I keep saying, as I was born about
three miles away in Sunbury so Feltham figured reasonably well
in my early youth. Can I just ask you to quickly say who you are
and what job you do and then I will go through our team.
Ms Dunsdon: I am
Fiona Dunsdon and I am Education Manager at HMP Littlehey. Littlehey
is a male prison of 706 men currently in what I guess you could
call a fairly rural location near Huntington in Cambridgeshire.
Mr Blunt: I am Peter Blunt. I
am Director of Prison Education Services in Strode College in
Somerset and we have contracts covering 11 prisons out of 14 in
the South West. We are also a prototype area for the new LSC provision
starting in August next year. We have 300 teaching staff working
in 11 prisons.
Mr Pomeroy: Vic Pomeroy, Head
of Learning and Skills, HMP The Verne in Dorset. Just out of our
window is the prison ship. We have 600 prisoners. We are a training
category prison. Half our population are foreign nationals. Most
will be going out of the country on release. I am currently sitting
on the board regarding the changes to the LSC and the prototyping.
Ms Loveday: I am Anne Loveday,
Head of Learning and Skills at Feltham. Do I need to say everything
because we have had a huge introduction this morning?
Ms Birch: Jane Birch, Deputy Education
Manager here at Feltham, responsible for juvenile education.
Mr Adeagbo: Dayo Adeagbo. I am
the Education Manager responsible for the YOs and juvenile education
at Feltham.
Chairman: Excellent. You will know about
select committees. They are nearly always 11 members and they
reflect the majority in the House of Commons. That means there
are seven Labour members, three Conservatives and one Liberal
Democrat. All Parties are represented here today. Jonathan?
Jonathan Shaw: I am Jonathan Shaw, I
am a Labour MP and I represent Chatham and Aylesford in Kent.
Helen Jones: I am Helen Jones, Labour
MP for Warrington North
Mr Chaytor: I am David Chaytor. I am
the Labour MP for Bury North.
Chairman: I represent Huddersfield.
Mr Greenway: I am John Greenway, Conservative
MP for Ryedale in North Yorkshire.
Jeff Ennis: Jeff Ennis, Labour Member
for Barnsley East & Mexborough in South Yorkshire.
Paul Holmes: Paul Holmes, Liberal Democrat.
I represent Chesterfield in Derbyshire.
Q898 Chairman: So a good selection here.
As you know, prison education has not been in our remit for very
long so as soon as it became part of our bailiwick we decided
to have a look at prison education and training. We are well on
with our inquiry now. We have looked at Reading, we have been
to three prisons on the Isle of Wight. We have looked at a Finnish
prison, we have looked at a Norwegian prison, and we looked at
three prisons in British Columbia last month. We have been quite
busy and we have taken a lot of oral evidence and we have received
an enormous amount of written evidence. We are getting to the
stage where we are starting to think we know a little bit about
it but you will probably be able to disabuse us of that right
now. One of the dangers in this is if we ask a question and everyone
chips in with the answer we will only get three questions done,
so could you help sort us out on who should lead on a particular
answer. We will box and cox and see where we come up to. It is
very interesting talking to some of the inmates here. They were
very positive about the educational provision here and really
thought that they were getting great benefit from it. There seemed
to be a range of opinion amongst the four of them about how much
education access they had during a day. What is aimed at for someone
who wants to get as much education as possible?
Ms Dunsdon: At Littlehey our model
is primarily part time so most of our students would attend either
mornings or afternoons. What we hope to move on to eventually
is in the other half of the day they would have the experience
of working. We are not quite there at that stage but that would
be the model. I guess between 13.5 and 15.5 hours of actual classroom
work each week. Open University students of course would do a
lot in their cells as well.
Q899 Chairman: Yes but one of the inmates
was saying how much he had valued the basic skills whereas other
evidence we have taken says this Government and Home Office obsession
with basic skills as a driver is crowding other things out of
what you can offer inmates.
Ms Dunsdon: I think that is very
true. The key performance targets for literacy and numeracy have
been in many ways very successful. They have really focused the
mind and they have driven a lot of improvements and we are seeing
that coming through with the prison population. The standards
of literacy and numeracy are definitely higher than they were
two or three years ago. However, I think what has happened is
we have seen very much a narrowing of the curriculum, certainly
in my prison and I do not think my prison is different to any
other prison. I do think talking to prisoners as well, as I did
before I came here because of course they are the most sensible
people you can speak to, they also felt there is very much a focus
on qualifications which they thought, yes, that is very important
but to the extent of it affecting learning for learning's sake,
and I think we need to swing back a little bit from that.
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