Examination of Witnesses (Questions 920-939)
8 FEBRUARY 2005
MS ANNE
LOVEDAY, MR
DAYO ADEAGBO,
MS JANE
BIRCH, MR
VIC PMOEROY,
MR PETER
BLUNT AND
MS FIONA
DUNSDON
Q920 Chairman: You are all pretty happy
with the contracting system so long as it is good contractors?
Ms Loveday: Yes.
Q921 Helen Jones: I wanted to do a follow-up.
Perhaps Dayo or Anne could tell us, when you have recruited staff
to work here, what keeps them here? It is a difficult job. What
are the best ways of keeping those staff within the system so
that we get a pool of experienced staff who know what they are
doing? What are the hooks that keep them working here?
Mr Adeagbo: Two things and Jane
will reflect on some of the care and pastoral support that we
offer them in terms of quality of training and pastoral care,
but what is important is that we train them and we pay for their
training. It takes a certain type of member of staff or teacher
to want to come here. They have got to have a feeling for our
children and that is important when they come here. We have a
lot of support.
Ms Birch: We do. When teachers
come into the establishment I think they are wrong to expect they
will be teaching five days a week, for instance. With us their
contact time is much less. In fact, they only teach 3.5 days a
week so they have a lot of departmental duty time which is taken
up by planning, organising meetings, et cetera. They also have
staff support meetings. We have meetings to discuss quality of
teaching, learning strategies, and how to deal with difficult
behaviour, et cetera, so we have a very positive behaviour management
back-up both dealing with difficult behaviour in the classroom
and also for staff.
Mr Adeagbo: Can I just add that
it is difficult. We get tears at the end of each day. It is difficult
for them coming back every day and it is challenging but they
keep coming back so it takes a certain type of staff to work in
a juvenile establishment.
Mr Blunt: I agree that staff developmental
opportunities are absolutely essential to what you are talking
about. Also I think good communication is as well. There should
be regular visits from a contractor to the prisons and also staff
in prisons should have regular meetings so that they are always
up-to-date and they know not only what they are doing but why
they are doing it.
Q922 Chairman: Where do they hang out
here? Do they have a place where they all mix, a staff room?
Ms Loveday: A staff room.
Q923 Chairman: Is it a pleasant environment?
Ms Loveday: Oh yes, there are
three gyms.
Mr Blunt: But that is not the
case everywhere.
Q924 Chairman: It is interesting when
we looked at pupil behaviour and looked at what was happening
in Los Angeles where they have developed a core of teachers who
wanted to work in challenging schools or who wanted to be in tough
urban situations. They recruited them because they wanted to do
that job, they trained them and they kept them together as a cohort
even if they went into different schools. The management of the
team and the focus had much better results and less turnover than
regular teachers. There is no room for a programme like that for
you?
Ms Loveday: I think we are doing
it here. We have debriefs. We allow them to shut down once a month
on a Wednesday afternoon at three o'clock so they all do training,
whether it is prison training, we have a child psychologist who
talks to them about behaviour management. All the support systems
are in place for team working. Here I think we have got it just
about right. We have got a very strong quality improvement group
which is totally focused on raising standards and quality but
we are a team and it is across the prison which is more the answer
to some of your questions than just looking after individual teachers.
It is looking after everyone and making sure they feel valued
as a team.
Mr Adeagbo: There needs to be
more professionalisation of prison staff. The different levels
and career paths need to be looked at in the future to try and
make it more professional.
Q925 Chairman: A question some people
do not like—and we are more free to ask it when we are abroad—is
we have a group of prison officers in this country that are very
undertrained, in our view, compared to a year's training in Scandinavian/Nordic
countries and much longer in British Columbia. Here it is only
six or seven weeks, no formal qualifications, a written test and
then that is it, is it not? How far can you have an educational
culture of learning here if your prison officers are not involved?
Mr Blunt: That is not always the
case. In our prisons, for instance, we have made an offer, again
through the Plymouth University scheme I was talking about, of
a Cert Ed for every prison instructor and in some prisons they
have taken that up, very successfully so.
Ms Loveday: We have also done
that here.
Q926 Chairman: Explain the difference
between a prison officer and a prison instructor.
Mr Blunt: They are prison officers
with a specialism in a particular workshop.
Q927 Chairman: What percentage would
that be?
Ms Loveday: Like motor mechanics.
I have got eight of my 15 who have done 7407, Part 1 which is
the basic teaching certificate
Q928 Chairman: Out of how many prison
officers?
Ms Loveday: Prison officers are
not instructional staff.
Q929 Chairman: No, but the point that
was made to us in other places was that it applied to all prison
officers.
Ms Loveday: Every prison officer
who goes through the current training does have a basic literacy
and numeracy input. They have some training in that.
Q930 Chairman: At what stage?
Ms Loveday: I am not quite sure.
Q931 Mr Greenway: So the guys we saw
this morning in the painting and decorating workshop, were they
instructors or were they prison officers?
Ms Loveday: Instructors.
Q932 Jonathan Shaw: They have got a Cert
Ed?
Ms Loveday: No, the 7407 is the
first part of the teaching certificate.
Mr Pomeroy: I am linked into what
Peter is talking about which is extremely successful so everyone
in our gymnasium now has a Cert Ed Level 4. I am going back to
the low skill equilibrium; it is the same argument. We have got
a low skilling of people to begin with. The majority of prison
officers historically were not employed to do the job they are
doing now and have not been converted to what we call the "new"
job. So what is the new job? The new job for instructors is quite
clear. We want them to be Level 4 trainers and teachers. We want
them to be high-skilled. That is what we are doing. The prison
officer who has been left I would say in the old turnkey role
has not signed up to the new prisoner learning journey and the
new prisoner attitude because the prison officer is the most important
person in the prison, in my view. Without the prison officer nothing
works. I think the prison officer has been left out. I do not
think it is the prison officer's fault. The training is out of
date for the modern prison officer and therefore I cannot see
prison officers buying into it because they do not understand
it and I do not blame them for not understanding it. I think really
the training is out of date. We need to talk to them about the
new culture. They need to buy in because if I want my prisoners
to get to education it is the prisoner officer that gets them
up in the morning, the prison officers that feeds them, the prison
officer that encourages them. The most important person in the
prison is the prison officer.
Mr Blunt: Apart from the technical
bits of searching and keys, I do not understand why the Prison
Service does not contract out prison officer training as they
do for prisoner training.
Q933 Jonathan Shaw: How is it out-of-date,
Vic?
Mr Pomeroy: If you look at the
NVQ criminal justice framework nationally it has not worked. The
private prisons have bought into it considerably but the national
service are having trouble initiating NVQ programmes. Even so
it is seen as a custody award and does not encompass all the things
we are doing with prisoners because it is seen as contracted out
or somebody else's job. The prison officer is isolated from that
and feels isolated. I think the prison officer needs more involvement
in that and needs to use prison officer skills more appropriately
because I think the skills are there but the training has not
been available.
Q934 Jonathan Shaw: So the prison officer
from his training very much sees his role in isolation to all
the other organisations and agencies that might be working in
the prison?
Mr Pomeroy: Yes, they become a
threat to everything the prison officer does, security-wise, movement-wise.
Every time we get involved we move the prisoner more than necessary
and we bring in tools that probably cause problems, so the prison
officer has to buy into that to want to do that.
Q935 Jonathan Shaw: Can I move it on
a bit to contracts. This is obviously a crucial stage in terms
of the contracts. You are saying you have got a pilot. Can you
tell us how the pilot is going and what is different about it
and what are the problems?
Mr Blunt: In one way it is a very
easy question for me to answer but in another way it is a difficult
one because we are in the middle of putting together tenders now
to gain the contract. Some of the things that are in the contract
I do not particularly agree with but it is not for me to argue
at this stage because the die is cast. The specification is there
and we have to live with it. What is happening is that the LSC
is looking for an integrated approach in providing education for
offenders, not for prisoners but offenders both inside prisons
and in the community, and the contract for offender education
has been split into four strands. The first strand is about the
overlaying of an induction system which will go across all the
other three strands. The second unit is basic education, the sort
of things that we are doing currently except that split out from
that in strand three is arts and personal and social and life
skills. The fourth one is to do with e-learning, resource-based
learning, distance learning. The LSC is looking for four lead
contractors in the South West to cover 14 prisons and for the
whole of the community-based offending population, 29,000 offenders,
they are looking for four providers. At the moment that contract
is out and the tenders are due in on 17 February so we are not
in a prototype yet. It is due to start in August.
Q936 Jonathan Shaw: Following on from
that then can I ask, and perhaps Anne you would like to answer
this question, as a head of learning and skills, how do you react
to what Peter has said and does that provide you with any confidence
that there is going to be sufficient flexibility?
Ms Loveday: I think there are
a number of questions which I hope the prototypes are going to
answer.
Q937 Jonathan Shaw: What are they?
Ms Loveday: Some of the questions
on funding strands and continuity of provision. We have just had
a huge discussion about the actual management. If you have got
your four different providers, who is going to have the overall
management and who is going to knit those teams together within
the provision? I think there are a number of questions that the
prototype will answer for us. Obviously equality of provision
is one, but for me I think it is a very exciting prospect. I think
it is new, it is forward looking, it will give us a chance as
heads of learning and skills to be innovative.
Q938 Jonathan Shaw: How is it going to
do that?
Ms Loveday: At the moment you
are constrained within the one contract. We have got a PICTA workshop
which is a good example there. I could buy that PICTA workshop
in from Cisco Systems up the road. Why do I have to be get it
from somewhere else. I do not have to be stymied. It is straight
into the provision I am in at the moment. I can get best value
for money.
Q939 Jonathan Shaw: You will be able
to pick and mix what you want?
Ms Loveday: I will be able to
pick and mix and get what is was the best for my establishment.
Previously we have spoken about the exclusivity of establishments.
What will work here will not work somewhere else but I know what
will work here and the staff know what will work here so it gives
you good choice. It is very exciting.
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