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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 114-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE EDUCATION AND SKILLS COMMITTEE Feltham Young Offenders Institution, Feltham
Tuesday 8 February 2005 MR LEVI SMITH, MR AFRIM MAHMUTI, MR LASELLS HAZEL and MR MOHAMMED SALEH
MS ANNE LOVEDAY, MR DAYO ADEAGBO, MR VIC POMEROY, MR PETER BLUNT, MS FIONA DUNSDON and MS JANE BIRCH
MS EMMA FLOOK, MS LIZZIE FOSTER, MS FRANCESCA HINCHCLIFF, MS PAT SANDOM, MR IAN HINGS and MS KAREN CHAFFEY MR BRIAN CATON Evidence heard in Public Questions 798 - 1057
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Education and Skills Committee on Tuesday 8 February 2005 Members present Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair Mr David Chaytor Jeff Ennis Mr John Greenway Paul Holmes Helen Jones Jonathan Shaw
________________ Witnesses: Mr Levi Smith, Mr Afrim Mahmuti, Mr Mohammed Saleh and Mr Lasells Hazel, examined.
Chairman: Can I first of all thank you very much for coming to talk to the Committee. I am Barry Sheerman and I am the Chairman of the Committee. All Committees in the House of Commons are made up of 11 Members of Parliament and on investigations like this we do not always get a full turn‑out but we got a very good turn‑out this morning. If I go round we have Jonathan Shaw, who is a Labour Member of Parliament; Helen Jones, who is a Labour Member of Parliament; and so is David Chaytor; I am a Labour Member of Parliament; John Greenway, who is a Conservative Member of Parliament; Jeff Ennis, who is a Labour Member of Parliament; and Paul Holmes, who is a Liberal Democrat. You have got all three Parties but we reflect the majority in the House of Commons so it has not been fiddled to have more Labour members; that is the majority in the House of Commons. We have seven Labour, three Conservative and one Liberal Democrat. The job of a committee is really to look at what the Government spends its money on and to see if it is good use for the money. A lot of it is about value for money. A lot of the stuff that we do is really looking at all the programmes that the Department for Education and Skills does. Up until a few months ago the Prison Service and the Home Office ran prison education and training but they have changed the rules and it is now done by the Department for Education and Skills, so it means that our group can have a look at you. We have been doing our homework. We have been to Reading Prison, the young offenders institution there. We have been to the Isle of Wight to look at three prisons on the Isle of Wight. We have looked at a prison in Finland, a prison in Norway, and two or three weeks ago three prisons in Vancouver because we wanted to see what they do in different countries to see how they compared with what we do. We will not ask you any personal questions. You can put anything on the record but I am just telling you that this session is on public record. Mary is the verbatim reporter and this is very special because normally we take evidence in select committee in Parliament in our usual room and it is all very familiar to us and we have the verbatim reporters taking every word down and all that, but on odd occasions we come out and we have a public session elsewhere. So here we are, we are in Feltham Young Offenders Institution, not very far from where I was born. I was born in Sunbury just down the road here. I was reminding some of the members of the Committee when I was a kid the only lively thing anywhere near here was the airport. If you wanted to see a bit of life you had got to cross the road and look round the airport. Jonathan Shaw: Great days! Mr Greenway: That was when the airport had a Nissan hut! Q798 Chairman: And as Mick Jagger said to me as we went over there ‑‑‑! Just so we get the spelling right, what is your name? Mr Hazel: Lasells Hazel. Q799 Chairman: I am not usually as bad as this but I have got a terrible cold and I have just been interviewing the Prime Minister for two and a half hours. My colleagues have been here since nine o'clock but all the Committee chairmen every six months interview Tony Blair for two and a half hours so we were trying to give him a hard time. We are not going to give you a hard time. We are looking at how good prison education and skills are. Someone comes into prison, yes, they have been convicted of something, and they are serving a period of time in prison or in a young offenders institution, and it is our view that prison education and skills should equip people to come out of here or come out of young offenders institutions and take up life pretty successfully in as good a job as they can possibly get and to get settled into a normal way of life again. You are the experts on what goes on here so most of the questions we are going to ask you are about what you are offered here. If you do not mind telling us one thing, it would be useful if you say roughly the length of time that you are here. You do not have to but it will enable us to make comparisons between what is available to short‑term offenders and longer term. You will wonder what the hell this is all about. Do you want to say anything to us just to break the ice? You are very welcome. Why did you volunteer for this then, Levi? Mr Smith: I did not volunteer for it. My education teacher asked me to do it and I said yes I will do it basically. Q800 Chairman: What does she teach you? Mr Smith: She teaches me reading, writing, all sorts, English. Q801 Chairman: What part of the country are you from? Mr Smith: I am from Ireland originally Q802 Chairman: Northern or Southern? Mr Smith: Dublin. Q803 Chairman: The real Ireland! Afrim, what about you, did you volunteer for this? Mr Mahmuti: I did not know what was going on. The teacher just told me some MPs were coming. I was a bit shocked sitting with MPs like a famous person, which I am not. Then she said the MPs would ask some questions and we want some lads who have been here a long time and short time as well to tell them about what the prison is like and I said, "Alright, I will do it, I will volunteer for that." It is a pleasure to be here. Jonathan Shaw: It is good of you to come. Q804 Chairman: We did speak informally to prisoners in other parts but you will be the only formal ones and this will all be in the document that will be published on our report. Mohammed, what about you, did you volunteer? Mr Saleh: They asked me and then I volunteered and I said, "Yes, I will do it." They asked for me to explain to you what prison is about and I said I would volunteer. Q805 Chairman: Good. Lasells? Mr Hazel: The same, I volunteered as well. She asked me about it. I said I would not mind telling them what happens in education and things. Q806 Chairman: It is not going to be a state secret as to how old you are; so how old are you? Mr Hazel: 17 Mr Saleh: 20. Mr Smith: 17. Mr Mahmuti: 18. Q807 Chairman: Let me start off by asking you what sort of education and training do you get here? Mr Smith: All sorts. You get a lot of English, you get all sorts. Mr Hazel: It is a mixture. Q808 Chairman: Yes, alright, let's ask you a more difficult question. How long have you been here? Mr Smith: I have been here a year and a month. Q809 Chairman: Okay. We are pretty naive, as you would expect from Members of Parliament, so tell us about what happens when you arrive. Mr Smith: When you arrive you are in shock. You do not want to come to a place like this. You do not want to be in a place like this obviously, but when you come here you just get your head down, and you go to education. You start learning more stuff about it. Q810 Chairman: How long does that shock last before you start thinking about getting on with education? Mr Smith: A couple of days. Q811 Chairman: As short as that? So when do they do the assessment of what your educational needs are? Mr Smith: The next day basically. Chairman: Very soon after you arrive? Q812 Jeff Ennis: Do you think it ought to be later? Do you think they ought to give you more of a bedding in period because you are in that state of shock? Would it not be better to delay it for four or five days before they do the educational assessment or do you want to get it out of the way? Mr Smith: If it is done then and there it gets you out of your cell and more or less gets you used to it, if you are doing stuff like that. Q813 Chairman: Can I just ask the others that question. Was that your experience of how quickly you got assessed for education? Where are you from originally, Afrim? Mr Mahmuti: Albania. Q814 Chairman: Your English is very good. Mr Mahmuti: Thank you. When I arrived in here it was my first time in prison and my first time in prison in this country as well. I did not know how the prison was going to be like. When I saw it I thought it is not quite that bad. Q815 Jonathan Shaw: Not as bad as Albanian prisons? Mr Mahmuti: I have never been there either. I have never been to prison so I do not know what people say and if it is bad. All the prisons I knew about I had just seen on TV and in films. I was not that shocked when I saw the prison, but I was a bit upset because what I thought was I should not be here and thought I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So that was my imagination. Q816 Mr Greenway: How long have you been here? Mr Mahmuti: For 13 months now. Q817 Chairman: Mohammed, how long did it take before you were assessed? Mr Saleh: It took me about three weeks for me to know everything about prison and how the system works. This is my first time being in prison so how I thought prison would be when I was coming towards Feltham I thought it would be what people talk on the street and what you see in the films - the governors do not really care about you and inmates having fights with each other. When I came here after about three or four weeks I got used to it and I thought it is different, people are more polite. Some governors respect you but there are some governors that do not but you have to keep your head down. Q818 Jonathan Shaw: When you are saying governors, are you meaning officers or staff? Mr Saleh: Officers. Sometimes you get officers that show you respect and we show them respect back. Some governors come into work on the wrong day at the wrong time so they take that out on us, if they are having a problem with their family or whatever. You get a mixture of different governors who have got attitude but you cannot say nothing to them or argue with them because they are the governors and we are the inmates. Apart from that, we just keep our mouths shut. There are certain inmates who argue with the governors and either get put in basic or in segregation. Q819 Chairman: Have you been anywhere else bar this? Mr Saleh: No. Q820 Chairman: So this is your only experience? Mr Saleh: This is my first time. Q821 Chairman: Lasells? Mr Hazel: I got assessed the next day. I came from Hollesley Bay which is in Ipswich. Before that I was in Ashford and Bristol. As soon as they assess you they know what level you are in English and maths. You do not have to go to education but it is a good thing to go to because you are out of your cell more and if you are scared of being locked in your cell all day it takes your mind off stuff. When you go to education you get to express your mind. When I first came it was the same thing. People talk about jail but it is not like people say and what it looks like in films because they talk about 24‑hour or 23-hour bang up. It is not really like that. Basically you are out of your cell all the time. If you wake up at 7.30 in the morning and the TV and electric goes off at eleven on the juvenile side, by the time it is ten o'clock you are tired, so even though you have been out of your cell and you are not going anywhere, you are still tired. Education helps you because it is not just maths and English. There is music, art, food technology, and when you go to the gym it is not just weights, you can play football or rugby. There is a rugby pitch outside so it is good. The one thing I like about education is when you go to education they do not just say, "Do these sums." They offer you what you want to do basically so if you want to do division you do division, if you want to do algebra you do algebra and things like that. It does help you because otherwise you lose track and then things you remember doing in schools seem harder because you have not done them. It helps to stay back on track. Q822 Chairman: I was very rude. Would you like a cup of tea or coffee while you are is sitting there? Mr Hazel: No. Chairman: We are all sitting here having a cup of tea and did not offer you one. Okay. Jonathan? Q823 Jonathan Shaw: What would be interesting to hear is about what you think the education and training programmes in Feltham are going to do for you. Ultimately we represent your families and lots of other people, and generally we represent 70,000 people each and they want to know what all this money is being spent on. They also want to know are these people going to do it again. So what is the education programme going to do for you? Mr Mahmuti: I think education is going to help me to stay out of crime. That is what I think, that education helps to educate yourself to help you get out of crime. When I first came in here they offered me so many things. They offered me a one‑to‑one teacher for my English and spelling and reading and writing in English, which was really helpful. I did a course in mechanics. I had done a course for three months and a half and I am qualified for it as well. I did some kind of short course but I think that is helpful because when I first come in here what I thought was I wanted to be a plumber because I know some bits about plumbing but they did not have that course in here. I was a bit upset. They asked me if I would like to join the mechanics course. I did not really know much about cars but I said, "Okay, I will have a go and if I like it ..." I really enjoyed it and when I come out I think I will do mechanics again because I really enjoyed it. I think it did help me to achieve something. Q824 Chairman: Is that the course that Ford helped to create? Mr Mahmuti: Yes. Mr Smith: I was also doing Ford's as well, motor mechanics and I did not know anything about motor mechanics. I got educated from that. With the reading and writing as well when I do get out I will be looking for a job in motor mechanics. Q825 Jonathan Shaw: Can feel some benefits from the programme in terms of your rehabilitation? Mr Smith: Yes, you can. Q826 Jonathan Shaw: Staying out of trouble? Mr Smith: Definitely. Mr Saleh: I was doing the half training course of painting and decorating and then I was doing a training course in gardening but then I finished with that. The only way that I know will keep me out of trouble is by me keeping myself occupied is to be a fitness instructor. I used to go to the gym a lot but when I spoke to the gym governors about whether they are doing a course and getting a certificate in that so basically you have got a certificate to say you are qualified as a fitness instructor, I thought if I can do that at GCSE or A‑level, but they told me they do not do it any more. I know there are a lot of guys, inmates from different wings that want to be fitness instructors but, without doubt, they need to get the qualification while they are in here instead of coming out and then going to college and going through all that long process. By the time they are doing that, who knows, they can just go back and do other crimes on the side. Q827 Jonathan Shaw: So it is about getting the courses. You want to do plumbing. You want to do fitness instructing. What about yourself? Mr Hazel: I have not been here that long but what I would like to do is the same - fitness instructor, sports and recreation, things like that. They do not really do that in here. If you get the fitness instruction then that is the first stepping stone to go all the way up. So that is what I would like to do as well. Mr Saleh: When you come out you can finish off half of the course that you have done here to make it easier for you and so then --- Mr Mahmuti: May I excuse myself for five minutes? Q828 Helen Jones: Could you tell us a bit about what your experiences of education were before you came here? Were they good or bad? If they were bad, what is it particularly that has made the difference for you in here? What has been done that you think has got you back into education? Is it the courses? Is it the teachers? Is it a mixture? Mr Saleh: Before I was in here I was an ignorant child. I never used to listen to anybody. I just did what I had to do and followed other people doing crimes, so whatever they were doing I used to follow them and do what they did. Basically I was a follower. Since I have come here doing certain jobs right, now at the moment I am working as an education orderly, so I see inmates in different classes. I just go and clean different classes and if there are other inmates that need help if they are stuck with maths or English I know because obviously I have been trained and they have taught me how to do it. Q829 Jonathan Shaw: Is that what that is? Listeners? Mr Saleh: Listeners that is the next job. That is a two-week training course. Q830 Helen Jones: So you have been given a bit of responsibility; is that what you are saying? Mr Saleh: If inmates have got problems with family out there or with baby mothers and they are here for Christmas, and certain inmates that think they are going to commit suicide or kill themselves, they prefer to speak to a listener like me. To keep me occupied I can sit down and listen to a person and how he is feeling. So the anger he has got in him he can take it all out and talk to me so once he has finished talking to me he is okay - but he would prefer to talk to an inmate than talking to the governors. Q831 Helen Jones: Levi, can you tell us perhaps ‑‑‑ Mr Smith: When I first came in here I did not know A to B. I did not know how to read. I did not know any letters. Then I met the education teacher one‑to‑one and ever since then she has been teaching me. Now I am just getting on with reading. Q832 Helen Jones: You have had a lot of one‑to‑one support rather than being in a class? Mr Smith: Lots of one‑to‑one. Q833 Helen Jones: That has worked for you? Mr Smith: Definitely it has. Q834 Helen Jones: Before you came in here what had happened with your education? Had you had a bad experience? Mr Smith: When I was on the outside, I am a traveller obviously and I had never been to school in my life. I travelled up and down the country. When I came into here that is when I started education. Q835 Helen Jones: So you have started from scratch really? Mr Smith: Yes. Q836 Helen Jones: What about Lasells? Mr Hazel: My education was good in school but the difference is when you are doing education in school you have got a class of 30 children and some people do not want to work, some people do want to work, and you have got the misbehavers and the good. You learn but you do not learn as much because in here there are five, six, seven, eight people to a class. If you do need help it is not one‑to‑one one with the teacher but the teacher can show you what you are doing wrong and what needs to be done right. It is easier. You can tell her what your weaknesses are and what you are good at. If you need help, for instance I am good at maths and stuff but the only thing I have problems with is algebra. It seems to me pretty confusing ‑‑‑ Jonathan Shaw: Do not worry about it! Chairman: Do not take any notice of this lot; they all failed maths! Helen Jones: No I did not! Q837 Chairman: And John is a good mathematician. Mr Hazel: It is hard. I can do the easy ones but it gets confusing and I just do not know how it works basically but it seems like I am not the only one so that is good! Q838 Helen Jones: No, you are definitely not. Really what you are all saying to us it is that one‑to‑one support has been valuable for you? Mr Smith: Yes it is. When you are in a group and asking you are not getting much help but when you are by yourself with an education teacher then ‑‑‑ Q839 Helen Jones: It takes out the embarrassment factor? Mr Smith: Yes, it does. Helen Jones: Thank you for that, it is very useful. Q840 Jeff Ennis: Is there any stigma attached to doing education in this institution? In other words, is it seen not to be manly to do a particular subject or whatever or does everybody accept education for its value now in Feltham? Mr Smith: Some lads do and some lads do not. Some lads come in here and they do not care about education. Some lads do come in here and they do want to be educated before they get out again. Q841 Jeff Ennis: Do we have a number of students who change their attitude while they are in here and think, "I am not going to do any course," when they come into the prison and then by the end they have started doing courses and are benefiting from them? Mr Hazel: What happens when you see other people doing things like painting and decorating and things, even though some people do not mind doing it, they think a three-month course is too long, but you are not going anywhere so you might as well. When you see people doing good and they are getting awards and they are getting merits and things and they realise when they get out that can help them get in a job. They think, "My uncle is doing painting and decorating," or, "I can help paint granny's house," and things like that. It helps you. Even though some people do not want to do it, eventually they look on the bright side and slowly ‑‑‑ some people are just too hard‑headed but you get the ones that come around eventually. Q842 Jeff Ennis: Do the staff have a big influence in changing people's attitudes when they come in? Are they very helpful in trying to bring people on? Mr Smith: They are very, very strict on swearing basically, coming out of your cell, make sure your shirt is tucked in. Make sure you bring out your shower kit. If you do not bring out your shower kit you do not have a shower. They are very, very strict. It makes you learn basically. Q843 Mr Greenway: Let's check this is accurate to start with. Are we right to think that these vocational courses ‑ painting and decorating, bricklaying, motor mechanics ‑ are about the three most popular? Is that about right? Mr Hazel: Yes. Q844 Mr Greenway: Why do you think that is? Why are they popular? Is it because there is a good facility here for these three things and other people think they want to do it? Do they want to do it because their mate is there or somebody else they like is there and it is the thing to do or is there a genuine feeling that those three skills are good things for them to do? Mr Smith: Some people go into the workshops and they mess about sometimes. They are not into the course. They cannot be bothered. They just go there to talk to other lads and to get out of their cell for the day. Most of us go there to do our courses basically and get our certificates so when we get out we have got some kind of qualification so it can help us try and get us a job. Q845 Mr Greenway: Why is it those three things? What I am trying to find out is what is the attraction of painting and decorating and bricklaying? Mr Saleh: Most of the people in this prison, all the inmates, the only thing they can think of every time when I ask them, even people that are first time landing into jail, the first thing they will say is a mechanic or bricklaying or painting or decorating. That is what us teenagers think about as being employed - mechanics, painting and decorating and bricklaying. That is the only thing we can think of. Mr Mahmuti: Probably because you would find a job when you leave and get some money as well. Mr Saleh: It is easier to get employed by them jobs than being employed in other things like with a BT company. Q846 Mr Greenway: So there is a purpose? There is method behind their choice? There is something they are thinking about, "When I get outside I could do this"? Mr Saleh: Other people have been employed outside as painters and decorators and in bricklaying. Most of them are getting to the age that they are getting old so they need youngsters to get experienced so they have got finally in the future to say, "Yes, they are more experienced." Q847 Chairman: Do you get any careers advice in here, jobs advice about what sort of thing you should be looking at? Mr Saleh: Not really. It depends if they are in a good mood when they come into work. Most of the time when they come into work and they are not in the mood, they explain it to us but not as clearly so that we understand what they are saying. Sometimes they just say, "Do that. Make this wall painted, that, that", whatever. Sometimes people are confused, especially people that do not really understand English. So especially for people like them they need to sit down and talk them slowly bit by bit for them to understand, but some of them do not do that. Q848 Chairman: How many hours of education do you get a day? Mr Saleh: I do not know. I work as an education orderly so we start about 8.30 until about 11.20 and then we go to lunch and then we come back to education at about 1.35 until four o'clock for tea time. When it is tea-time certain people get cells, different people got banged up. Q849 Jonathan Shaw: They have that in the evening sometimes, do they not? Mr Saleh: Sometimes you get evening education, different wings on different days, but they do not learn, they just watch TV. Mr Mahmuti: Sometimes you might get an hour and a half for one‑to‑one, sometimes you might get an hour basically. That helps a lot. Every Wednesday I go down to this other education teacher, his name is Silver or something, and I get two hours there one‑to‑one Q850 Chairman: So if you are adding up the hours a week how many hours do you reckon you do in education or training? Mr Smith: About eight hours, could be more. Q851 Helen Jones: You said you were good at maths! Mr Hazel: I would say about 30 to 35 hours. Sometimes education gets cancelled. It does not always get cancelled because sometimes you do something else, you might get education cancelled but they take you to the gym or something. It depends. If it is not cancelled I would say about 30 to 35 hours a week. Sometimes you do not have education, you have gym so ‑‑‑ Q852 Jeff Ennis: What would be the reason education is cancelled? Mr Hazel: I am not really sure. Mr Saleh: There are two different sides in one wing, there is the A side and the B side. If the B side has got education and about three or four lads misbehave they will cancel it straightaway and you are banging up, you are not getting education. The main thing that irritates me a is when there is a group of six or eight inmates going to education, and if out of eight people one person makes a mistake, instead of the governors telling that person to go back to his wing, they make the whole class go back. That is not fair. It is not really all their faults and basically they are missing half their education. Q853 Mr Chaytor: Is there anything that you would have liked to do or now having experienced the range of classes you would now like to do that you are not able to do or do you think the facilities here provide you with everything you think would be useful? Mr Mahmuti: I have only got five or six weeks left now. When I first came it probably would have been nice if they had plumbing and electrician courses because I think there is good money when you get out if you work as a plumber. Q854 Mr Greenway: So those courses are not available? There is a carpentry course? Mr Mahmuti: Electronics is basic for two weeks. I mean electronics proper like installation of a house. Q855 Mr Chaytor: You cannot get a qualification in electronics. There is not a long enough course to get a qualification? Mr Mahmuti: It is only two weeks. Q856 Mr Greenway: There is a joinery course? Mr Mahmuti: No. Mr Greenway: There is no joiners course. Have people asked for that? Maybe I have got that wrong. Maybe that is what it is, people have asked for a joinery course. Q857 Chairman: Are you feeling alright now? If you are leaving here soon, when you leave have they told you here what sort of help they will give you? It is alright getting a course or an education in here but when you leave it is getting back, having a place to stay, finding a job, all those essential things. Have they started talking to you about that? Mr Mahmuti: Yes I had a meeting last week with my DTO youth offending team and Connexions were there and Connexions are looking for a place in the area so they can find me a college and work because I am going to be living in East London so they are going to find the nearest college because I want to carry on doing mechanics, and they are going find me the nearest place I can go to to carry on doing mechanics and part time at the weekend Saturdays and Sundays I can work at Kwikfit doing the tyring. That is what they are trying to do, so hopefully it will work. Q858 Chairman: That is not a bad package. Mr Mahmuti: I am really happy with it. Q859 Mr Chaytor: But when you leave you are attached to a probation officer who you will have see how frequently? Mr Mahmuti: We have not spoken about it yet but is just going to be a couple of times a week and we have curfew times to discuss. Q860 Mr Chaytor: That person's job is to make sure ‑‑‑ Mr Mahmuti: Make sure I go there on time. Q861 Mr Chaytor: At the local college? Mr Mahmuti: Yes. Q862 Helen Jones: I know when you come in you get an assessment done on your reading and writing skills and so on, but it has just gone through my head listening to you that some of you must have some other useful skills, practical skills. Levi, you saying you had been a traveller so you must have a lot of practical skills that I would not have a clue about. Did anyone sit down with any of you and work out what you are good at, what skills you had that might be taken a bit further? Did that happen at all? Mr Smith: No. Q863 Helen Jones: Would you think that would be useful if it did happen? Mr Smith: Maybe, maybe. Q864 Chairman: But Levi you seem to have grasped this opportunity to get your basic skills going? Mr Smith: Yes, definitely. Q865 Chairman: From what you said you went straight in to say you have got some real skills that you never had before. Mr Smith: Yes, I have. Chairman: All four of you seem to be thriving on it. Helen Jones: You are all the success stories, are you? Q866 Mr Chaytor: Can I ask about that. The fact that you are here is because you obviously see a value in the education facilities, the education classes here, but what about other lads who do not. Can you give us one or two examples, not naming them but just tell us a little bit about other inmates who have no interest whatsoever and why do you think that is, what can be done about it, and what is likely to happen to them when they leave? Mr Saleh: The reason why inmates act like that is because for example most of the people in prison especially adults on my side, the B side, when they go to music all they can see is either a drum or a keyboard but there are some of them who are more experienced and want to be qualified to play a different instrument. That is what they should be having different instruments that people can do instead of one keyboard and a little recorder and a drum player. That is not good enough. A lot of people come in, see that, and then they just muck about, get into a fight and then start drawing pictures on the wall. Q867 Mr Chaytor: That is just the limitation of the facilities? Mr Saleh: Yes. Q868 Mr Chaytor: Are there a lot of the inmates here who have got an ability to play music when they come in? Is that a strong feature? Mr Mahmuti: Most of the teenagers like music. Q869 Mr Chaytor: Like it but that does not mean they can play an instrument, or would they like to play? Mr Saleh: They would like to play because most of them sing, they MC, they rap, that is why they would prefer to have all different instruments, so they can use different instruments with different beats so they can rhyme it up with the song they are singing. Q870 Chairman: So you would like to see a greater range of music and taking music more seriously? Mr Saleh: Yes. Chairman: Okay. Any other things you would suggest? Paul, you have been very quiet. Q871 Paul Holmes: Just to ask do the prison officers do any of the training or is it all teachers who come in from outside? Mr Saleh: It is just the teachers who come in from outside. Q872 Paul Holmes: Is that good or bad? Would you prefer to have prison officers involved? Mr Saleh: I would prefer to have prison officers as well because we see them more. They are all over the place. If we are going to the gym or going to the toilet or the next wing or we are visiting, we see them more than teachers. If they are having a break they could sit down and have a chat and they could give you advice. It is better to come from both sides instead of coming from one side. Q873 Paul Holmes: It is not strictly on education but how much tension is there between the inmates and the prison officers? For example, some of the officers I was talking to this morning were saying that they thought that attacks on prison officers were becoming a bit more common now. Mr Hazel: What it is like is prison officers at the end of the day are officers so whatever they say goes basically, but that does not mean they are right, so certain officers think that because they have got the badge and radio that means they can tell us what to do. They say "jump" and we say "how high?" That is what happens. To tell you the truth if you respect certain officers they respect you but certain officers try to take it past the limit. If, say, one person does something, then that is it, they are telling us our social is over because of one person's silly mistake or what someone else does. They try to take it out on all of us. Some people get a grudge and that grudge builds and builds and builds. Mr Saleh: Then they start to hate all the governors even the ones they showed respect before. It just kicks off from there. Q874 Paul Holmes: So do you ever get any of that tension between yourselves and the teachers or is it just between yourselves and the officers? Mr Hazel: If it gets out of hand teachers just call for the officers. Mr Saleh: They press the green button on the alarm and that is it. Q875 Chairman: Does that happen very often? Mr Saleh: It happens a lot. When I work in education it happens a lot. Mr Hazel: Sometimes it is over pettiness and people like to instigate and stir things up, so it does happen a lot. Mr Saleh: It starts when people talk about earnings, how much money they make, what drugs they used to sell, and that is how it starts off. They both start to argue, especially if they are from different ends, and it starts to build up and someone can say something wrong that will get to the person and that is when it kicks off. Q876 Chairman: This is in the classroom and people are falling out? They are not falling out with the teacher, they are falling out with each other? Mr Saleh: When the guv comes in they change it and take their anger out on the guv and it kicks off with the guv after. Mr Smith: When the lads come in on induction week the lads are on there for a day or two days and they are shifted off onto the wing. They should spend more time on that induction wing and get taught a lot more about the prison before they get moved off to another wing. When the lads come in, the guvs do not know nothing about these lads, how serious are they on the outside, what they have done in the past on the outside. When they come into the other wings the guvs do try and push these lads to a certain limit basically and these lads cannot take that much pressure for what they are giving it to them, and that is why the lads break out sometimes. Mr Saleh: That is not a smart idea because when they come to Feltham they go straight to the officer, talk to them the first day they come in, and the next day they get moved to the next wing and they do not know nothing about them, their background, what they are good at, what they can do, so when they get shipped out to the next wing something happens and then whatever happens that person gets into trouble for it, not the governor, the one that took him to the next wing. When it is their fault they try to get out of it and then blame the victim for whatever he did when they should have let him stay here longer at least for about a month to find out what they are good at, what they can do, what wing is suitable for them because there are all these different wings here which are suitable for different people. Q877 Chairman: You think induction and assessment should be longer? Mr Saleh: Yes. Q878 Paul Holmes: A lot of people are here for less than a month anyway. Is that a problem because quite a lot of people are in and out fairly quickly? Mr Hazel: What happens is some people have short sentences, some people have long sentences and some people are on remand so they might be here for a couple of days and then they go. It is more a thing where if you are on induction and you do not know anything about prison, as soon as you get onto that induction wing that is what you see first. You do not know what is happening but you know there are other wings just like this with more people more settled in. When you first come into prison you are not settled in because it is your first time, you do not know what is happening. You do not know what education looks like, you do not know what the gym looks like, you do not know how everybody else feels, so with induction they should let you settle down until you are more humble and you know you can talk to the officers. When you come in you do not talk to officers straightaway as much as we do on our normal wing. On our normal wing we have fun and play games but on induction you do not open your mouth unless you are spoken. So I reckon what should happen is stay on induction for at least a month so they can settle in properly and then get moved because you have some wings where there is not even one person that is on basic and other wings where you have got all ten people on basic. When you are on basic you are barely out of your cell. Q879 Chairman: What does "basic" mean? Mr Hazel: No TV and ‑‑‑ Q880 Helen Jones: No privileges? Mr Saleh: No canteen. Mr Hazel: No privileges basically. Q881 Mr Greenway: No canteen so that means no phone? Mr Saleh: There is another thing as well. When other people from different wings start from standard to get enhanced to move from Quail to Teal and Wren, that is the advanced wing, the way I see it a lot of people when they get to enhanced are still in the wing and they have to wait because basically there is a queue for them to wait to get to the next wing. How I see it is they should build a bigger place with more cells because when people take a long time to be moved obviously a week later they could do something stupid and go back to basic. It is better for them to move them quicker instead of moving slow. Q882 Paul Holmes: You say there are quite a lot of fights that start in the classes. The lads who are causing the fights, are they the ones who are not really bothered about education, they are just there to pass the time? Mr Saleh: Mostly the lads who cannot be bothered with education just start on the one that does his work or someone that they think, "Look at him, he is Mr Perfect," or whatever and they will say something to get him angry. You will say to him, "I might be perfect but do not talk to me like that because I will show you the same way how you are talking to me", and that is how it gets into a fight and all that. Q883 Paul Holmes: So is there a big gap between the people who want to use education and the ones who do not? Mr Saleh: Yes. Mr Mahmuti: When you have a fight, if someone comes up to you and punches you and you punch them back, if you carry on doing the fight, they will nick you as well. They do not look at it from the point of view he came first. It should be seen as self-defence. They nick both of you together. Surely if someone comes and punches me I will not just stand there, I will reply. They say if someone punches you, just put your head down and just go to officers. There are not many people who will do that and they nick both of you and it should be the one who started it, and that is it. Mr Saleh: The majority of the governors in here do not do their job right. Since I have been here for the last seven months on remand they do not do their job right. For example, I am a listener and if someone in a different wing wants to speak to a listener we do not know. He could commit suicide or something and the governor tells me, "Give me an hour and then I will call him," but then they do not. My job is for me to listen to an inmate if he has got any problems. If he does not want to speak to a governor my job is to sit down and listen to him and then try to keep him alive instead of committing suicide. If they are not doing their job properly whose fault is it going to be? It is going to be my fault. Q884 Paul Holmes: Are they not doing the job properly because they are just being awkward or because they are rushed doing other things? Mr Saleh: I have not got a clue. Mr Smith: They make out they are busy all the time but they are not. They think they are busy but when they are behind the doors they are all playing games with themselves. Mr Saleh: They just sit in their office and drink coffee. If you say, "Guv, can I get my kitchen stuff?" they will say, "Wait, I will do it," and about 25 minutes later you come back and still see them in the same place bussing conversations, laughing, which is not really fair. Some governors, for example the drug test governors, when you are not around, if you are working or in a workshop, they can go to your cell any time without you knowing to check if you have got any drugs hidden but the way I see it is we might be criminals or in prison but no matter what we are they should still show us respect. They should go to our cells and keep them the same way they are. About three times the drugs governors have come to my cell, walked in there, checked everything, they could not find anything but just to check if I have got a phone or any drugs, and they leave footprints on my bed and on my pillow case. That will get an inmate upset and he will take his anger out on the governors. For what? The next governor is doing his dirty job. That is what I do not understand. Q885 Paul Holmes: Can I ask you about some of the facilities that you have got here. We have seen the library for example and a lot of money has been spent doing up the library. Do you go there very often? Mr Smith: We all go there. Q886 Paul Holmes: How often do you get there? Mr Smith: I go there about once a week. I get a couple of books. Mr Mahmuti: Twice a week. Mr Saleh: I work just next door to it so I go every day. Mr Hazel: Once a week. Paul Holmes: Can you use a computer in there? Jonathan Shaw: There are Learning Direct courses. Q887 Chairman: Do you get any IT courses here? Mr Smith: Yes. Q888 Chairman: Have you done them? Mr Smith: I have not had a go at any of them yet because I am only just coming up with my reading and writing. Q889 Chairman: Do you have ambitions to do some? Mr Smith: Yes, I am. Q890 Chairman: We are coming to our last few minutes. If you thought we have asked daft questions and have not asked you the right questions, now is your chance to tell us anything we should know that we have not picked up. Is there anything about the education and training particularly that you have not said that you would like to see improved or you think is a big turn off? Mr Smith: I pity the education teachers sometimes because there are not enough of them in here to try and teach all of us lads. They try and do their best. They are rushed off their feet every day. Sometimes they cannot even get a rest day. Mr Hazel: Sometimes if you go to education and you look in one class they might have two teachers but then someone else's lessons are cancelled. I see that as a waste because even though some people need extra help, I can understand if our class has two teachers it might be a certain reason why they have two teachers, but if you have got two teachers there must be a reason why education is cancelled. My education has been cancelled for the last couple of days but you have got classes with two teachers. I do not know what is going on. It is a waste. The worst thing is if education is cancelled. It might be cancelled from 1.30 for the rest of the day. You come out for dinner and they are telling you there is no social basically, and I have been banged up since 1.30. Q891 Paul Holmes: What is the usual reason they would give for cancelling classes? Mr Hazel: I do not know. Short on staff is what they say. Mr Salah: That is what happens most, short of staff. That is another thing they need to sort out about their staff. Q892 Paul Holmes: They are short on teaching staff rather than short on prison officers to take you to the lessons? Mr Hazel: Sometimes they get short on prison officers. I can understand it if an officer is sick, we all get sick, but if you do not have association, you might have court the next day or you might need to phone somebody urgently, something like that, because they are short on officers you cannot have it. On my side on the wing everyone is on the top level, is on enhanced, so they might give all the people in enhanced association but the standard do not get it. Obviously you are on enhanced so you get more privileges but everybody needs to shower and make a phone call. Mr Saleh: Everybody should get treated equal not different, no matter what level or standard they are. If they have got court the next day they should be able to take them out one‑by‑one, take them to the shower and have a shower rather then bang up and have a shower in your sink. I do not know why they even say that. Q893 Chairman: Is there anything you want to say? Mr Mahmuti: I agree with him. They probably need more officers working here. When it comes to association probably they just need more officers. Q894 Mr Greenway: I have got the impression that you are all pretty impressed with the education facilities that are here but are there shortcomings, are there things that you think they should be providing that they are not providing? Mr Saleh: These inmates are all different characters. They come from different countries and different cultures and how I see it is they should build more classes and teachers from different cultures. For example, they should be able to do French, Spanish --- Q895 Chairman: There is no language education, just English? Mr Saleh: Geography, history, RE, to learn about background histories, about Germany, World War II. Basically they should build more education than what it is right now. If you think of it a lot of people just keep going every day and see the same education class and do the same thing every day. Obviously they get fed up and they will think, "Forget it, let's just do something to get the whole class to go back to their wing," and for everyone to bang up basically, to spoil it for everyone. Mr Greenway: You want more choice, more variety. Chairman: We have come to the end of our session but can I say it has been a pleasure to hear you. Thanks for being so forthcoming and honest with us. Let me say that if you ever need us and you want to contact us you can write to me or write to the Committee. If you can remember any of our names it is your right to write to any MP and they will divert it to where they think your constituency was. If you have not got a constituency when you are in prison, if you write to us through me, I will pass it on to the person who is going to help you. Alright? Q896 Jonathan Shaw: Good luck. Mr Smith: It has been a pleasure being here with the lot of you today.
Witnesses: Ms Anne Loveday, Head of Learning and Skills, Feltham, Mr Dayo Adeagbo, Education Manager, Feltham, and Ms Jane Birch, Deputy Education Manager, Feltham; Mr Vic Pomeroy, HOLS, HMP The Verne; Mr Peter Blunt, Contract Manager, Strode College; and Ms Fiona Dunsdon, Education Manager, HMP Littlehey, examined. 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 and 14 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. Q900 Chairman: There is a controversy in British Columbia ‑ and I will pass on to the rest of the Committee in a moment - and there seemed to be two schools of thought: one that wanted a broad, diverse range of education provision and then there was another voice more from the non‑educationalist, from the prison administrators, that they wanted courses that actually equip people to confront the problems that had got them into prison in the first place ‑ containment of violent behaviour, addressing addiction, and a series of programmes. I certainly came away from the experience of those prisons seeing quite a big divide between addressing particular problems that a prisoner has as against a broad range of education. Does that debate go on here as well? Ms Dunsdon: Yes, I think it does. I think the way round that is having an individual learning plan that is linked to the sentence plan that actually works properly. I think that one of our greatest failings is the inability for prisoners to take planning from one institution to the next. From the administrative point of view, we work with not even 20th century but 19th century administrative procedures and there can be a potential clash. However, there does not need to be because both things dovetail together with proper planning. Mr Blunt: It is very rare that you will find an inmate with a single problem, they have got a multiplicity of problems, so it is the assessment to find out what the issues are and then an individual learning plan and sentence plan to address all of them. In a prison in my own patch where we had an inspection only a couple of weeks ago, the accommodation there in a big local prison for 600 only enables 12 per cent of the population to access education, so there are other issues. It is not about what we would like them to have; it is what it is possible for them to have both in terms of funding and more and more now in prisons, in terms of lack of accommodation. It is not just the lack of accommodation in its totality, it is lack of accommodation fit for purpose and certainly in all the practical skills there is very little accommodation in education units left now because when KPTs came in, as has already been said, a lot of the wider curriculum was jettisoned and with that you lost the specialist rooms. Q901 Mr Greenway: We ought to put on the record what we discovered this morning. Ms Loveday: I think the model here is completely different to what Fiona said but we have to keep in mind that Fiona's is an adult male prison and we have a mix of children and young offenders, and I think our model is something to be copied, but it is not cheap, it is very expensive. We have something like 31 hours of purposeful activity a week, which includes education, training, the gym, life and social skills, and addressing that offending behaviour. It is a complete holistic mix of everything that they need. Just to defend literacy and numeracy, what we have found is that if you put some people on to practical courses, you are able to support them very, very well with literacy and numeracy. Levi Smith, whom you have just met, did not attend formal education classes. He got his literacy and numeracy accreditation through support in the workshops. I am all for raising standards in literacy and numeracy and I think it is fantastic but you do not have to do it that way. Yes, you do have to have special classes for people like foreign nationals but there is a different way and there are different models around that complement everything that you have been discussing here. Mr Adeagbo: Just to confirm what has been said, I have been to an adult prison and I have worked at Pentonville so I share some of what you are saying but here it is considerably different. For the juveniles we have been very lucky to have funding from the Youth Justice Board and what we have got is what you are talking about, whole areas of education and learning. We even have evening classes and Saturday classes. This is resource led. It is also training led. Some of our teachers have had to retrain and some of the challenges there are still to be looked at in terms of professional development of teachers. Those areas will enable us to teach basic skills in a way that should be done which is as skills for life, integrating it, embedding it, and making sure it has a purpose for the learner not just in a discrete way and that way it does not put them off, instead it enhances them and they can benefit from that. Ms Dunsdon: Can I just say I think the profile for young people in prison is slightly different from adults. With ours the part‑time provision is what has come down from the prison board as being ideal and it does allow for offending behaviour work in the other half of the day. It is not as if people are sitting festering in their cells for the other half of the day. They are doing active courses like that. Mr Pomeroy: Can I say from another angle that at HMP The Verne we have a selection of things but we also have a selection of perverse incentives. Quite often the provision is led by those perverse incentives. For example, if you attend an offending behaviour programme you are likely to get released early. If you attend education then that does not affect it so much. If I were a prisoner I would be going for the best option to get out first not what is my best option to change me. The other perverse incentive is pay and the fact is if you work in a kitchen you are going to get favoured food or favoured hours. Those incentives work against the individual's needs. What happens is the prisoner is going for his wants and totally ignoring his needs. Coupled with that is the perverse incentive for the establishment that we still have to run the ship, feed the prisoners, clean the prison, and so that drives against it as well and you have got to get that balance right. The other thing that works against us in a way is a bit jargonistic, I know, but it is the parity of esteem between education and vocationalism. I think education is what underpins vocationalism. Certainly something that stimulated me in life was work and education became meaningful to me. What we deliver in prison with Soskice and Finegold is a low skill equilibrium for prisoners on release. We give them low skills so they will get low pay when they are released. Q902 Chairman: What was that? Mr Pomerey: Research done by Soskice and Finegold that said Britain was trapped in a low skill equilibrium which is low skill/low pay and if we are to succeed with prisoners we have to move to a medium skilled/medium pay which gets them out of the benefit trap. The only way you get people out of the benefit trap is to give them the ability to earn above the benefit, which is at level three. Ms Loveday: One of the really interesting things that has happened - and this is exactly what Vic is saying - you have all heard of Business in the Community and we are building up very strong links with that and although it is very small here because of our churn we have already got people going to Cisco, which is next door to us, to do cookery. We have got people out there that have got jobs in pubs doing cookery. We have got an arrangement with Kwik-Fit coming on so they can go and learn their tyre Kwik-Fit bit with the prospect of possibly going to take an apprenticeship on release. Reading have the Transco thing. Q903 Chairman: Have you not got a sister programme to that? They have got Transco and fitters? Ms Loveday: We have got a Ford motor mechanics workshop. Q904 Chairman: It is the same sort of programme, is it not? Ms Loveday: Yes. Q905 Chairman: How successful is that? Ms Loveday: Not that successful but not because there is no will there, but simply because we have a 35,000 a year turnover here. We are only talking ever in any of these things about one or two guys. On that point it is successful, we do our very best, but we do sometimes transfer people into Reading so they can go on the Transco course. Q906 Paul Holmes: We were told this morning that Ford have pulled out of it here now because you have only got people very short term and they cannot get the continuation. Ms Loveday: Ford has backed it. They gave us a KA but ReMIT, which was a training arm of Ford and is now a national training company in its own right, are in here and they were funded by the Learning and Skills Council who withdrew the funding because we could not show that the guys would definitely go on to somewhere else to do an apprenticeship. However, I have written right up to Martin Narey and I have heard that I am going to get my funding back. We do short courses. Q907 Paul Holmes: Vic talked about the problem of low skills and we need medium and higher skills but that requires a longer course. You have got a majority of prisoners even in the adult prisons who are there for a relatively short period of time so they cannot complete on the course. You have talked a bit about trying to ensure that when they are out of prison they can carry on the course but is not one obstacle to that the fact that in England we move people around prisons so much, often away from their home area? How do you get the continuity between prison and college, for example? Mr Pomeroy: What we are doing currently is prototyping apprenticeships which means that the Learning and Skills Council are breaking the rules about the age of apprentices, about apprenticeships being in prison and not just outside. The frameworks are there in the community but we do not have access to them in prison. We will have 30 apprenticeships in wood machining in industry. We will take people to The Verne. If they are long‑termers they will probably get transferred to Leyhill so we will link that course to Leyhill so that we can anticipate at the beginning of the sentence that they will be released to Leyhill, they can then continue the course at Leyhill and then get released which means they can then go into the industry within the area and continue that apprenticeship. The beauty about the framework is that in prisons we have artificial frameworks that do not match to outside. If we have a formal apprenticeship that is recognised by industry (because the issue outside is the employers do not recognise in prison what we do) - and if we do a formal apprenticeship in prison which is the same framework as they accept outside and we progress it to the next prison where possible and then into the community, then the employer will link into that. Q908 Paul Holmes: When you said "where possible" if a prisoner from Parkhurst is going to somewhere in the North of England, is it always or usually or not very often possible to carry that apprenticeship through? Mr Pomeroy: What you would have to do is target those particular prisons to take that particular learning journey so we are looking at a particular group that would normally come to The Verne and go on to Leyhill because you can track it and prisoners will go on that journey through the prisons. Q909 Paul Holmes: When we were in the Isle of Wight in the three prisons there we got the impression that it all seemed to be much more random than that and you could not plan where the prisoners were coming from and where they were going to and you could not plan through the system at all in that way. Ms Dunsdon: I think the reality is that it is far more random because we are not planning sufficiently. The individual learning plan and sentence plan is still not good enough. Ms Loveday: I think the population explosion has a lot to answer for. An example in here is that if there are 20 guys coming up to court that we know are coming in here we have to get rid of 20. However good our individual learning planning is and what we had planned for those guys, they have to go where there is space. Chairman: This is wonderful evidence you are giving but we have a verbatim reporter and she is going to mix your names up. It is not a seminar, it is formal evidence and I would not want you to be misquoted. Q910 Mr Chaytor: I was just going to pick up Anne's point about you having to get rid of 20 people. Where do they then go? If these 20 are not on remand here but they have got sentences here they can be shifted mid‑sentence to somewhere else? Ms Loveday: They can be shifted anywhere. The worst scenario was about a year and a half ago when we were shipping them from here up to Castington, which is next door to Scotland. Q911 Mr Chaytor: From the point of view of the Service as a whole why is it not more efficient to send the ones who are newly sentenced to the prisons that have the vacancies. Ms Loveday: I think the whole idea of putting people into prisons like this is we are local to London so that we serve the London area and try to keep them as close to their families. People have already asked that question and I think that is being discussed by the Youth Justice Board and Juvenile Group whether it is efficient to do that. Q912 Jonathan Shaw: And whether it promotes a child's welfare? Ms Dunsdon: Of course some prisoners have to move for offending behaviour courses. We are a national resource for sex offender treatment programmes and drug rehab programmes, so we have prisoners from all over the country who come to Littlehey specifically for those programmes. Mr Adeagbo: I think there is a need for research in this area because we have got two conflicting issues: do you keep the young men or learners nearer home or do you keep them away and give them stability over a period of time where they can have re‑settlement programmes and where the outcomes might be better? Keeping them near their home may not be in their best interests. We do not know. There is a need for serious research into what we are doing because the turnover is really excruciating. It is a challenge for us in teaching and learning and we have to devise OCN ten‑hour programmes to survive to give them any meaningful outcome and accreditation. Somebody needs to do some research. Q913 Chairman: We did admire the British Columbian system which had federal prisons for sentences over two years and the local prisons for sentences that were below two years. It seemed to introduce a stability to the system because you had two kinds of prison experience. Can we touch on a thorny issue (but I hope you will be as honest as you can on this) and that is contracting the education provision outside. Some people love it; some people hate it. There is certainly a lot of division about it. Any comments on does it work better or would you like to go back to having it provided in‑house? Mr Pomeroy: We are into change which means our contract is up for renewal because the Learning and Skills Council are taking over the contractual issues. I believe it is beneficial. I believe it was a good move. I think it opens up the possibility for prisoners to have access to external opportunities. If people come in and out it stops isolation and institutionisation of teachers. I believe with the new contracts it will make it even more exciting by opening up financial frameworks which are mainstream frameworks by getting into the contractors. With the Learning and Skills Council it means that we link into their funding methodologies. Currently ‑ and Peter will probably tell you in a minute ‑ the contract is dead. We buy hours; and we cannot buy anything but an hour. The problem with the current contract is we buy an hour of education. If I want to deliver individual needs I have got to seek to get a teacher to deliver those hours. Under the funding methodology of the Learning and Skills Council we can pull down additional funding to support each individual learner. I think it is an exciting period of change. Q914 Chairman: To push you on this, again when we were in other countries, Norway in particular, what they were trying to get is normalisation so that if somebody was in prison they would have the Feltham Technical College providing it so if someone left here who was a local prisoner they could continue uninterrupted. I know that is an ideal and your offenders come from all over the place but is there not a charm about being related to an institution that would be available to them when they leave? Mr Pomeroy: That is if the prison serves a local area. If you take Portland, five per cent of Dorset are in prison because we have three prisons on Portland with 2,000 prisoners and a population of 8,000 so what we have got is a local college and if we start doing that we will skew the community to be looking more like Australia used to. Where you have got a local prison in London where you can divert people back to the local area it may be beneficial but certainly if you look at where we serve in Dorset it would not work because it would resettle a load of offenders straight into Dorset. Q915 Chairman: Peter, you will be in favour because you need the money, do you not? Mr Blunt: There is not a lot of that about! I have been involved in prison education now for 40 years in all sorts of guises and in all of that time prison education has never been in‑house. It has always been in some way contracted out. In the early days it was very, very loosely contracted out but it has always been provided by outside people. I dread the thought of it going in‑house because then that would be going against what everybody wants which is normality. We want to tie in with what the provision is outside and certainly the quality levels that exist outside and if it went in‑house it would be so incestuous. I know having spent 25 years at Prison Service headquarters, I thought I was up‑to‑date and when I left the Service and came into a college I realised how far I was out of date. It is as stark as that. You soon get out of touch when you are out of mainstream. Mr Adeagbo: Can I just say the new dispensation is only as good as the head of learning and skills who is contracting. It is as good as the ethos and the culture that has been built over a period of time. We have had four years together and we can say we are moving in the right direction. We have got to be very careful. It is a good ideal to have four or five contractors delivering different areas of learning and skills provided there is back‑up and support for the head of learning and skills to make the right choices. Q916 Chairman: Why do so many classes here get cancelled because of lack of staff? Mr Adeagbo: We have difficulties with staffing. Feltham, as you know, has not really been having a very good name. Q917 Chairman: ESA is supposed to be providing educational staff. Why is there an absence of teachers in the classroom? Mr Adeagbo: The difficulties we have is that prison education staff are different from college staff. They are not easily transferable. The teaching principles here are slightly different because we are dealing with different learners and colleges are only beginning to realise that working with juveniles who are disaffected from schools ‑‑‑ Q918 Chairman: When First Bus tells me that they cannot run 15 per cent of the buses in my constituency because they cannot get the drivers, I find that no excuse at all. They are contracted to supply transportation for my constituents and they damn well should do it. I would have thought any contractor if it is contracted should have coverage for sickness. We should not have a situation where teachers just because it is a prison establishment are able not to turn up without any cover. Mr Blunt: Can I just say how we deal with that in the South West. We used to have a difficult staffing issue and to a certain extent we still do in one urban area in Bristol where there is virtually no unemployment and therefore recruitment is difficult. We realised about three years ago with the expansion of education, certainly in FE where the Government was encouraging more people to stay on, we were going to have a staffing problem three years hence and we decided to look at three things. The first thing we did was to go in league with the University of Plymouth and we advertised publicly for people who had professional backgrounds, who were not teachers, but who might want to consider prison education, and we put on PGC courses and Cert Ed courses for those people. We have been recruiting now and well over 100 have graduated from that scheme. So they are home grown teachers. They did their teaching practice in all our prisons and we gave them a 30‑hour prison module which was equivalent to 20 credits for an MA course in prison management which we are also starting at the University. That was one thing. We have home grown a lot of our teachers throughout the South West and they are really outstanding. You can tell when you interview the people who have not been through that compared with the people who have been through that. There is a world of difference in their knowledge and their skills and their understanding. When you think about it, it is a very big decision to take for someone outside to apply to become a prison teacher. They do not know what goes on behind a high wall. This is one way of easing them into it. It is part of normal teacher training with a specialism for prison education so if they do not like it after that they can still go back to mainstream. That is one way. Q919 Chairman: That is a good, flexible, innovative way to approach the problem. Why are your contractors not doing that sort of thing? Ms Loveday: They are under an action plan. I think part of the problem is with the current contracts they do not have any teeth. We are hoping with the new contracts that they will have teeth. Mr Adeagbo: There are other issues. Ms Loveday: Slightly to support the contractor, I have to say that the quality of teaching staff that they do recruit is excellent but recruitment is slow simply because of the area that we live in. Every other prison in this area will say they have problems recruiting and also we have to have enhanced security clearance here which takes sometimes three weeks or sometimes it will take seven months. So you may have half a dozen people lined up to support you but by the time you have got them they have got jobs elsewhere. Mr Blunt: They want a job now not in seven months' time. Ms Loveday: Exactly, that is one of our problems. 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 do not contract out as they do for prisoner training prison officer 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 are 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 are 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 picture workshop which is a good example there. I could buy that picture 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. Q940 Jonathan Shaw: I suppose my only concern is if there are only going to be these four providers. Ms Loveday: That is only one model, is it not? Mr Blunt: There are two other models, one in the North East and one in the North West which are based largely on what happens now but are geographically based rather than based on the four functions I have just been describing. Q941 Jonathan Shaw: I suppose the question it throws up is it sounds good in theory but there is concern about whether the infrastructure is available out there and will all your picking and mixing that you are going to do, Anne and Vic, mean that it is not sustainable for these contractors? Am I right, Peter, is that a problem, or Fiona? Mr Blunt: There is that possibility. It depends if all the providers are appointed. It may be that we are bidding for two. If we get two and the other provider gets two there will only be two providers. We could bid for all four if we want but we have chosen not to. I agree wholeheartedly with the way in which the LSC have become involved and will become the provider and the funder. I think that is a really good move. Hitherto we have not been well served with the people who have managed it before. Q942 Chairman: I am being a terrible spoilsport but we are coming to the last three or four minutes of this session. I want to tell you that we are very grateful for the quality of the stuff that you are giving us but we have now got about 30 seconds each for you to tell us anything you think we have missed or something else you would like to tell us. Fiona, you can start. Ms Dunsdon: First of all, staff and the new contractual arrangements. We have got some good experienced staff in prisons and we do not want to lose them. Some of them are very good. This is what worries me very much. We need an electronic transfer of inmate records as soon as possible. We have been promised it since "granny was a boy". Q943 Jonathan Shaw: It is coming soon. Ms Dunsdon: We are still waiting. I would plea that all the money that has been spent on things like the PriceWaterhousecoopers ‑ and I think this is at least the second or even third time they have had some money out of the budgets relating to prison education and the aborted REC project - if we could concentrate on spending money at the coal face for our prisoners. Everybody who works in prison education, you asked what kept them there; it is because they love the job basically. I hate to see this waste of public money when it could be spent on computers for my boys. Q944 Chairman: We should do a report that says PWC should give the money back. Ms Dunsdon: If I could just say if anybody would like to visit Littlehey it is only 40 minutes from King's Cross and I would be delighted to show you around. Mr Blunt: I would like to make two very quick points. There are two of the things that are outside the remit of the LSC which I think are tremendously important. The first one is accommodation. Something has to be done about the quality of prison education accommodation. It is okay in the new places like this but for every one of these there are ten where it is extremely poor. That is the first thing. Materials and equipment is also outside the remit of the LSC and we have got to rely on systems that does not exist for the allocation of funds for that. Finally in a prototype region I would like to think that there would be a possibility of actually creating a secure college in one of the prisons where every prisoner was a student. Q945 Chairman: I like that. Vic? Mr Pomeroy: Mine is a weighted score card. Again I am back to perverse incentives. Q946 Chairman: I like that. This has got to be in. Mr Pomeroy: The biggest deficit that a governor can have is to lose a prisoner. Unfortunately last year we lost three prisoners and we went from being one of the top five prisons in the country to being bottom. Does that mean that we became a bad prison overnight? I do not think so. We out-score all our educational targets, our training targets and all the rehabilitation targets. The weighted score card is so perverse in terms of security that it means when you are making decisions in prison those low order things on the score card are ineffective. Prisons are failing and the adult learning inspectorate is still not on the weighted score card. Q947 Chairman: Because of my cold I thought you kept saying the waiter's score card and I was saying to our Clerk, "What's a waiter's score card?" Ms Loveday: I agree about the weighted score card because we would love to do much more ROTL ‑ release on temporary licence - where students go out to college, go to motor mechanics training, or whatever. Simply because of that weighted score card it is so difficult to get anybody out of this prison. Once we had 20 guys down to go for the Duke of Edinburgh Award. At the end of it we got four cleared and by the time they were going out they were all gone. Realistic key performance targets and secure funding and let people like me have my budget please by at least the end of April. I am still getting dribs and drabs of money to come in from 1 April budgets. We do not know where we are often in prisons. We get so much money from different areas. That is one of the things. Consistent resources and what I have said this morning, I would like eight learning support assistants for the YOI side please. Thank you. Q948 Chairman: Thank you. Ms Birch: Movements. Just an example. In one classroom last year 2004 we had 1,400 boys in the art room of the YOI side. Prior to that there were 600‑800 boys on the juvenile side in one year. We could do so much more if we could keep boys here for longer. We have had to write our own accreditations in order to meet their needs, which we can do and we are working so hard to try our best to do that but the movements are phenomenal. Q949 Chairman: The last word to you. Mr Adeagbo: To me it is to refocus on what we are missing. It breaks my heart when a young man goes out from here and is a broken arrow and he comes back within a year or two. We need to focus on why that happens. We need to have the same quality of provision that sometimes we are able to provide and reach this learner. When he goes away and leaves this gate and there is nothing out there for him and he comes back, it makes all our work meaningless. Chairman: That is very important, too. Thank you. Q950 Jeff Ennis: Can I come back to a point that was made earlier on and it is specifically to do with the movement of prisoners. We referred earlier on to an example of 20 moving out to allow 20 to move in from the local community. Is any cognisance taken of the 20 who would be moving out in terms of where they are in their educational course work at the time and would that be a reason for allowing a particular prisoner to stay in this institution rather than be one of those to be moved? Ms Loveday: It is needs led. We do have holds on people up to 12 in this whole prison of 600 and something prisoners, but if it is required they have to go. It breaks our hearts. Q951 Jeff Ennis: How did you manage to keep Levi Smith here for 13 months? Ms Loveday: Some of them are here for a longer time. It is just the average. As I said this morning, if someone is here for 12 hours that shoots it all the wrong way for you. So you are talking average. Chairman: These guys will fight like mad for the health and safety of workers but when it comes to giving our verbatim reporter a 15-minute break between sessions they still keep talking. That is the end of this session. We could talk informally during the break if any of you can hang around for a couple of minutes. Will you stay in touch with us? If you think of anything you have not told us or you think on the bus home or in the car home you should have said this to us will you communicate with us because we want to make this a seriously good report. Thank you. Witnesses: Ms Emma Flook, Numeracy Team Leader, Ms Lizzie Foster, Literacy Team Leader, Ms Francesca Hinchcliff, ESOL Tutor, Ms Pat Sandom, Instruction Officer, BICS, Mr Ian Hinds, Principal Officer Physical Education, and Ms Karen Chaffey, Librarian, Feltham Prison, examined. Q952 Chairman: Can I welcome you to the Select Committee's hearing here in Feltham. We do not often meet outside the House of Commons. We do occasionally but it is pretty historic when we come to a young offenders institution and take formal evidence. I do warn you that everything you say will be taken down and it will appear in our report, indeed even faster I think it will be on the internet shortly. Could you quickly introduce yourselves and we will introduce ourselves and then we will get started. I will first say that we are pretty privileged to have had so much help from yourselves and other people we have met. We have met inmates and we have met some of the people that manage the education and skills here and in other institutions. We are beginning to be slightly dangerous because when a Select Committee has taken enough evidence to know a bit about it they start thinking they know everything. We have looked at three prisons on the Isle of Wight. We have looked at Reading. We have been to British Columbia and looked at three prisons there in Vancouver. We have been to Finland and Norway. We have been around a bit. We are getting to the end of our deliberations. The evidence we have been taking has been pure gold but we have not in a formal setting talked to many who deliver the teaching at the sharp end. Ian, could I start with you. Mr Hinds: Ian Hinds. I am Principal Officer at Feltham, Head of the PE Department, and I have been here for seven years, 22 years in the Service. I have been a PO for the last 16 months. Ms Chaffey: Karen Chaffey, Library Resource Manager. I have worked at Feltham for 13 and a half years, always in the capacity of the library. I started off as Library Assistant. Ms Sandom: Pat Sandom, I run the industrial cleaning course here at Feltham and I have been here since May 1991. Ms Hinchcliff: I am Francesca Hinchcliff. I have been at Feltham for a year and a half. I am the ESOL tutor in education and that is about it for now. Q953 Chairman: You must have Yorkshire blood in you with a name like Hinchcliff. Ms Hinchcliff: Yes, a little. Q954 Chairman: Most of the MPs here are from Yorkshire so you will get quite a welcome. Ms Flook: Emma Flook, Numeracy Co‑ordinator. I have been in my role almost a year now. Prior to that I was a Numeracy Tutor. Ms Foster: Lizzie Foster, Literacy Co‑ordinator and I have been in post round about six months. Chairman: So a nice range of experience and diversity of backgrounds. Great, excellent. Jonathan? Jonathan Shaw: Jonathan Shaw. I am a Labour MP and I represent Chatham in Kent. Chairman: Used to be a social worker when he worked for a living! Jonathan Shaw: Anything else you want to say about me? Helen Jones: Helen Jones. I am the Labour MP for Warrington North. Chairman: Teacher and lawyer. Mr Chaytor: I am David Chaytor. I am the Labour MP for Bury North. Chairman: FE lecturer. I am Barry Sheerman. I chair the Committee and I am the MP for Huddersfield. I used to be a university teacher as well. Mr Greenway: John Greenway, Conservative MP for Ryedale in North Yorkshire. I did spend ten years on the Home Affairs Select Committee when I first entered Parliament. I was Shadow Prisons Minister and I have been here several times before. Chairman: He used to be a policeman. Mr Greenway: I was a policeman for five years, a long time ago. One of my sons is a policeman. Jeff Ennis: Jeff Ennis. I am Labour Member of Parliament for Barnsley East and I am an ex primary middle school teacher. Paul Holmes: Paul Holmes. I am the Liberal Democrat MP for Chesterfield in Derbyshire and I was a secondary school teacher. Q955 Chairman: So you can see we are all‑Party and we reflect the House of Commons majority so there are 11 Members, seven Labour, three Conservative, one Lib Dem. That is why we are balanced like that. We are going to ask all sorts of daft questions but is there anything any of you would like to say to kick off how you view prison education and training as it is today here. Is it good, bad, horrible, wonderful, average? Mr Hinds: I think it has moved on an awful lot. I have the biggest experience of prison service having worked at Latchmere, Wandsworth and Feltham on two spells. I arrived as Feltham got absolutely slated with a Chief Inspector's report and it has come on leaps and bounds. It is fantastic. The facilities are second to none, they are absolutely superb. Q956 Chairman: One of the reasons we chose to come here was because you turned round Feltham from a time when it had something of a reputation five years ago and whether that was well deserved or not everybody in the community has said that we should go to Feltham, so you must be doing something right. Mr Hinds: I think there is an issue. Resources is the toughest thing. People always start talking about money but Feltham definitely benefited from being slated in the way that it was and then getting the resources to put it right. Once it had been recognised it was failing, people said let's do something about it. There are probably other jails within the Service that are not as high profile as we are that could do with those resources now, but do not take it away from us. Jonathan Shaw: Do not give it to anyone else! Q957 Mr Greenway: Would it be fair to suggest that there were all those new residential blocks ‑ or they were new, they are about 18 years old now - but that the culture did not change initially? The culture seems to me to be significantly different to the last time I was here which was probably about five or six years ago? Mr Hinds: I think up until four years ago Feltham had all these different units working independently. You could walk around a unit and say "This is Partridge unit," and then you would go on to Quail and say, "This is different, it operates in a different way." Now they are very similar and the juvenile units operate to the same and the YOI units operate to the same. That has definitely given a better balance across the establishment. Q958 Chairman: One of the things that we are picking up as we talk to witnesses is that there is some discussion about whether more prison education should be focused on basic skills and targeting skills or whether that is not crowding out other things you could do usefully for changing prisoners' lives. Is there too much emphasis on basic skills, in your view? Ms Sandom: I do not think it is too much emphasis. They need basic skills. A lot of them arrive at Feltham and their reading and writing is very, very poor. A lot of them are kicked out of school at a very early age. I have had lads through the courts who finished school when they were ten years old. Q959 Jonathan Shaw: Ten? Ms Sandom: Yes because they are so disruptive and the schools cannot handle them. They put them out. They perhaps go once or twice a week to one of these centres but they do not always turn up. They are thrown on the scrap heap. It is like looking at a ten‑year‑old and saying, "You are finished, you are nothing." They are not. They have abilities there. Some of them do want a lot of help with their reading and writing skills and some will accept that help. Q960 Jeff Ennis: Has the emphasis on basic skills crowded any other areas of the curriculum out, do you think, particularly for the younger students under 16? Ms Sandom: Some of those under 16 do not want to go to formal education. They like it more informal. They consider they are adults. The law says they are children but they are not. If you look at a six foot six lad who is 16 years of age you can hardly call him a child. He is a young adult, an adolescent but he needs that help and he needs the encouragement and more often than not the one‑to‑one is what works better rather than sticking him in a class with half a dozen pupils. They can come on to training which will benefit them when they get out but also reading and writing skills and being able to add up, basic mathematics. They actually need that. Ms Flook: We have a numeracy tutor who works alongside the workshops, the mechanics, the paints. She withdraws them on a one‑to‑one basis and teaches numeracy alongside those subjects, very much related to what they do. Q961 Jonathan Shaw: Is that new? Ms Flook: No. Ms Sandom: She has been doing it for quite some time. She used to do it group-wise and take the whole group but found it worked better taking them away from that group one‑to‑one. Ms Flook: Giving them 20‑minute minute blasts and they do that every other day. That is hugely beneficial for them. Ms Chaffey: I think that will come more into effect when you have the learning support assistants helping out the tutors in the class and then they would do the one‑to‑one. Q962 Jonathan Shaw: We have heard lots of good things about learning support assistants. Ms Sandom: We could do with more here so that every lad has access to an individual tutor for basic skills. Q963 Chairman: What do they do? Ms Sandom: They do maths, they do basic reading. There was one here that I had on a course who could not read and write at all but with one‑to‑one tuition that lad came on and could read. He was a traveller and had never been to school in his life. Q964 Jonathan Shaw: He was sitting in your chair a little while ago. Ms Sandom: It would not be Levi Smith, would it? Q965 Chairman: He told us he could not read or write when he came here. Ms Sandom: He could not read at all. He could not recognise his name. The first thing they taught him to do was to write his name and you looked at it and it looked like a child's who had just started school but he is a young man. Then he was a bit frightened of using reading and writing. He was frightened of making a mistake. It certainly helped with the one‑to‑one tuition he had. His tutor used to come over to my workshop, take him away for half an hour and read with him and then put him back. Q966 Chairman: What qualifications do the learning support assistants have? Ms Sandom: I am not sure. Most of them are volunteers. Ms Foster: There is a range. Ms Flook: They should all have at least GCSE standard maths and English. Ms Foster: Some of them have degrees, they are educated and they tend to move on to do teacher training. Ms Flook: They receive training in‑house. Ms Chaffey: The LSAs though are only towards the juveniles. When you have the YO side you have to rely on VSE board of education volunteers and they are matched on a one‑to‑one basis with students that way. You do not get LSAs for young offenders. Q967 Chairman: They deliver things like the Toe by Toe? That works here, does it? Ms Chaffey: It has been used. Ms Foster: It is in evidence here. Ms Chaffey: It is not used here all the time but it has been used at times and I think it is still used sometimes. Ms Foster: There is an imbalance on the YO side because the boys can go to VSE voluntarily or they can be recommended, but very often we could do with support in the class with the YOs regarding their basic skills. Juveniles are covered with LSAs and that works extremely well but there is an imbalance on the YO side. Q968 Chairman: Can I ask a very simple question. What is your relationship with prison officers? Are they supportive of education? Do they understand as well as you do that prison education is important and should be delivered? Is it a good, harmonious working relationship or are there difficulties? Ms Sandom: In the main it is quite harmonious. You can talk to the officers. You can phone and talk to the unit staff or even go over and see the unit staff and if you have got a particular problem with a lad they are very supportive. Q969 Chairman: One of the things we have been worried about as a Committee is that prison officers in this country as compared to other countries get a very short amount of training. They only have to have a short written test, no qualifications and a six to seven‑week training period. That is very, very short for most professions. Do prison officers continue to be trained? Ms Sandom: They receive training all the time. You would know more on that. Q970 Chairman: Anne Loveday told me there was no more training once they had qualified as a POA except for training in restraint. Ms Sandom: They have training all the way through. There is JAZ (?) training for juveniles. Mr Hinds: You are absolutely right because the current new officers course is five weeks on the college and the rest of it then within the home establishment. Of those five weeks on the college, one week of that is control and restraint, so 20 per cent of their knowledge is control and restraint, which is a vast percentage of a prison officer's training. Ms Chaffey: My partner is SO Training in here. He has been in the Prison Service for about 16 years. The training has come down from when he started. He would be one of the first to admit that. You have an eight‑week training course and you get five weeks of training in the classroom and three down weeks where you are at your establishments. You get control and restraint which is done every year and then they do JAZ training as well working in this prison. The other ones who work at Wormwood Scrubs and Wandsworth will not get that because they are not working with juveniles. Q971 Jeff Ennis: Going back to the imbalance in funding in terms of the juveniles getting better funding levels and more learning assistants, et cetera, is that more of an attraction to tutors to teach in that age range, as it were? Ms Foster: Although Feltham A and B is on split sites it is one educational department and at any given time we can teach on either side. Q972 Jeff Ennis: So there is no attraction one over the other? Ms Foster: No because although we have staff that have been on A for some time you can be called to teach on B, so there is no real attraction and I would say there is no real incentive. Ms Sandom: On workshops we mix the two together. We have them from A or B. Often that works better than having six juveniles or six YOs. Q973 Jeff Ennis: Do you think that the mixed regime could be extended across the whole curriculum or not? Ms Sandom: I do not know. The YJB prefer them kept separate, do they not, for most of their classes and what have you. We find it works in the workshop better because the older ones tend to say to the younger ones, "Don't act stupid because we are going to be sent back." It tends to work that way. There is not a great deal of difference in their ages anyway. Ms Chaffey: When I started we used to have class visits into the library and there was mixed education then. It was not split up into the juveniles and YOs and the class as a whole is fine and there is no problem with the mixture of ages. Ms Sandom: We have not had a problem. It is much better. We are a mixed world, are we not, a mixed society. Some of them are 16 to 18 but the moment they are 18 they are considered to be an adult and they go on to B side, but there is not a lot of difference. One lad could be 17 years and nine months and the other one just 18 but we put one on one side and one on the other. There is only a three‑month difference in their age group. Q974 Chairman: They are legally children until they are 18. Ms Sandom: I know. Ms Chaffey: I think it highlights the differences in education on either side because the education is not the same on either side. The education department would be the first to admit that. Ms Foster: How do you mean not the same? Ms Chaffey: There are more resources available for the juvenile side than the YO side. Ms Foster: Yes, I would agree with that. Q975 Chairman: What would you want to change in the system that we have at the moment? How would you improve it? Ms Foster: For me personally as a teacher within this establishment I would like to see more support for YOs. It is heavily weighted to the juveniles. If we are looking at 26 as being a kind of cut‑off point when boys seem to reduce their offending dramatically or stop, I think there needs to be input from 18 to 22 in establishments that take them to 22. To me it seems false economy to not support the YO side as regards their basic skills. I think it is crucial that if they are here until they are 22, for the ones that come out of here or they go somewhere else but they are finishing a shorter sentence, there needs to be an input into that side as well. Q976 Helen Jones: Francesca, how many different languages are you dealing with here most of the time? What proportion of young people come in here with English as a second language or do not speak any English at all? Ms Hinchcliff: On average I think it is about 25 per cent of the inmates in the establishment are foreign nationals. That varies slightly month on month because last month it was about 23 per cent. Q977 Helen Jones: We are only talking rough figures. Ms Hinchcliff: I could not give you an exact percentage but probably around ten to 15 per cent come in with English as a second language who are unable to speak English fluently, shall we say, who come into the ESOL classroom, and on the YO side they tend to be a slightly large proportion than the juvenile side but the numbers vary obviously depending on the movement. So there are a substantial amount of lads who come in here who need support with English. Obviously there are foreign nationals who are Caribbean who come over and English is a language they use as well as another quite fluently. It is still quite a high proportion. Mr Hinds: I think there is a huge number of different languages now though. I am trying to remember what it was before Christmas. It was 60 or 90 different languages within the establishment at the time and that is phenomenal. Ms Hinchcliff: Predominantly the languages that are dealt with are East European ‑ Romanian and Albanian. We have quite a large proportion of those students and from the former Soviet Union Eastern Bloc countries, the Balkan states, North and West African regions, and some Far Eastern languages as well. Of course, if you are looking to the Indian sub-continent there are a vast number of languages there as well. There are countless really, a lot. Q978 Jonathan Shaw: As many as you want. Ms Hinchcliff: Unfortunately I cannot speak them all but I try. Q979 Mr Greenway: This Learning and Skills Needs Analysis, which now having raised it we might be able to somehow or other put it in the evidence, is fascinating because it suggested that 30 per cent of those needing language assistance are Albanian. Ms Hinchcliff: There are an awful lot of them, yes. Q980 Mr Greenway: 14 per cent from Afghanistan and 14 per cent from Portugal, Somalia Croatia, Vietnam, so it is a real mix and it must be a very difficult job for you. Ms Hinchcliff: It presents challenges definitely because obviously some students do not get on with others from certain other nations. There are cultural clashes, there are historical clashes between various nations and that can present an entire problem in itself in a classroom trying to control situations that bring up these sorts of issues. Q981 Jonathan Shaw: If the UN is not able to keep the peace there is not much you can do! Ms Hinchcliff: Yes, of course the diversity of language as well, trying to cope with a number of students whose first language is completely different. Trying to engage them all into a familiar topic can obviously present challenges but I would not say it is entirely problematic, no. Q982 Chairman: If someone says to you here is a Government setting you targets to meet, do you wake up in the morning thinking, "Gosh, I have got to meet these targets"? Is there a bit of you that says, "I would like to respond better to the individual needs of individual prisoners"? Is there a tension between those feelings? Ms Hinchcliff: I would not say there is a tension. I think there are definitely areas which you have to look at collectively and there are certain targets that will affect the group as a whole that I have to meet. However, I think you can take a bit from both. You do get time to spend with individuals and you can learn a lot from them. What you can gain from sitting and having conversations with them can benefit others in the group so they complement each other quite well. Obviously at times it is difficult to deal with meeting targets that affect this diverse group when in some ways it is completely impossible, especially as within the classroom itself I have a mixed ability group so I do not deal with just one level of student who meets, for example, a level one or an entry three; I have the whole range. So let us say in a given class of eight I would have perhaps two or three who can barely speak a few words of English, I may have a couple who can read quite well but are unable to communicate verbally. I may have a couple of level one or two students whose English is quite good and who are working towards accreditations in various different aspects in other classes as well. So within that it is a challenge to differentiate and to meet all the individual needs but at the same time there is only one of me so therefore I have to try and accommodate all of them into a familiar topic so it is quite challenging but it does seem to work. The students are very considerate of others. They are generally willing to help each other and support each other as well. It does work. I have to say I feel fortunate because overall in education as a whole I seem to have a very calm, respectful group of students who are all very keen and willing to gain something from education. I know in other classes it presents a little bit more of a challenge with non‑ESOL students, shall we say, but different cultures have different responses towards education. The students I have from Asia, especially China, Japan, countries where education is considered very important and they have very high standards, are very bright, very keen, very conscientious, and it is marvelous to be able to work with these students who are focused on achieving accreditation and setting their own high standards for themselves. Q983 Chairman: You have not been in the job that long? Ms Hinchcliff: Not here. Q984 Chairman: Can I ask the same question as I asked your colleague; what would you want to improve? Ms Hinchcliff: ESOL itself does not have an allocated LSA. It was considered by the former learning support manager that LSA provision would not affect ESOL, therefore I would love to have an assistant in the classroom because given the diverse range of students it would be fantastic to have someone to work with individuals, so funding for that would be ideal. Also resources. Teaching ESOL in a prison environment means that the resources that I use and the materials that I use generally I have to create myself or adapt materials that are on the common market, so to speak, being used by other establishments, so some funding or research into creating resources specifically for this sort of environment would be fantastic. Q985 Chairman: So there is not a learning resource centre? Ms Hinchcliff: No, ESOL is not awarded one of those and also more staff and more classes because ‑‑‑ Q986 Chairman: That came out before. Is there sufficient classroom space? Ms Flook: There are not enough numeracy staff, never mind the LSAs. The turnover of staff is massive. Q987 Jonathan Shaw: Turnover? Ms Flook: Yes. Q988 Jonathan Shaw: Tell us about that then. Ms Flook: Since I have been here we have been constantly under‑staffed. You cannot get qualified staff through the door to start with. When we are interviewing we are only ever seeing a couple of people. It just does not attract. It is not attractive to numeracy people because they are in such short supply anyway. My background is secondary school, and to make the move to come here they need additional ‑‑‑ Ms Foster: I think it is also because of lack of career structure. Once you come in as a teacher that is kind of it. Q989 Jonathan Shaw: You cannot become a deputy head? Ms Foster: It gets fewer at the top unless you cross over into the prison establishment. Realistically when you come through the door as a teacher that is it. Q990 Helen Jones: Can I come back on that because it is something I have raised a few times because it strikes me there is a contrast with what happened with the prison health service where it was equally difficult to get qualified staff and keep them because there was not a career structure. I would be interested in your views, both of you, on what we could do to attract people to work in the Prison Service as teachers. How can we give them satisfaction and make them a career structure? Would it be by spending some time here and some time out in colleges? What in your view would help? Ms Flook: I came from secondary. I took a break for a few years and then came here, my reason being I have always liked working with challenging children. I started out as a tutor and I do not think I would have stayed if I had not got my position, so one of the important things for me was to be able to progress. Also some of the conditions of it not being school. You asked about the conflict between the key performance targets and the curriculum you are delivering. There is an ability to deliver something slightly different from what you do in school. The boys that we see have failed in school and we ask why have they failed in school and hopefully being able to deliver something that is maybe slightly different and possibly having more freedom to do that. Q991 Helen Jones: I am thinking out loud really but if we could put in place a system that attracted people here based on the opportunities to try out and learn new teaching techniques, perhaps to do some research into those teaching techniques, would that in your view help? The opportunities for promotion within the system are always going to be very limited, are they not, because there are so few people and therefore so few senior posts. Ms Foster: I think for me ‑ and this is my second teaching post in a prison in a YO I ‑ it is to do with once you are in through the gate you are isolated from other teaching establishments and I think particularly if the contract is through a college, which I understand virtually all prison education is, there needs to be a connection with the college and some integration with the teachers here, with NESCOT for example, or whoever the education provider is, so that teachers here are not feeling isolated. We work with the toughest children and I think there needs to be recognition that you are not on your own with it and not wait for staff training in six months' or 12 months' time. There needs to be a structure from the minute a teacher comes in so that there is support and connection with the college provider and with other colleagues, maybe a special needs department in a secondary school. There should not be this acute isolation as teaching professionals in prison. Helen Jones: That is very interesting. Q992 Chairman: If it was a local provider would you value being part of a staff where half of your time was devoted to this establishment and half was there? Ms Foster: I do not think that would be practical myself. Q993 Chairman: No. Ms Foster: I think once you are in you are in but I feel there needs to be clear support and not waiting for staff to feel undermined and under pressure and then they leave. Prison education is a very useful stepping stone. It is not the end of the world. In a sense it is like the beginning because once you have worked in a prison outside they tend to be rather interested in you. Q994 Jonathan Shaw: You just said there was staff turnover but you did not give us any detail about it. Ms Foster: In the two years I have been here I was the only full time numeracy teacher when I was employed. Other staff were sessional, doing it on a day‑to‑day basis. Now we have got three one of whom has just applied for a different job. That is including myself so there are two others. We have basic skills as well who teach literacy and numeracy. Ms Foster: It needs full-time staff and more weighted to working full time. Q995 Chairman: How many of them are there altogether? How many tutors and teachers are there here? Ms Foster: The whole team is round about 100, with LSAs, everybody in together. Q996 Chairman: Do you feel yourselves a community here? Ms Foster: Absolutely, absolutely. Chairman: And you have got a base? I have not seen it. Have you seen it? Mr Greenway: No, we have seen the classrooms. Q997 Chairman: But you have got a home, have you, there is a collegiate feel about being here? Ms Foster: Yes, absolutely. Chairman: So you do not just come in here, do a few hours and then disappear? Mr Greenway: You are well-motivated. Chairman: That is useful because these are some of the things we did not know. David? Q998 Mr Chaytor: Can I ask about the distinction between those who are working for the NESCOT contract and the permanent employees of the prison. Pat, Karen and Ian, you are under contract? Ms Sandom: No, I am employed by Hounslow Library Service. Mr Greenway: Are you? Mr Chaytor: So we have got a third complication. We have got three employers. Chairman: So you are a missionary for Hounslow? Q999 Mr Chaytor: Does that cause difficulties of communication or linear management or overlap or whatever or is that just not an issue? Ms Sandom: I do not think it is really an issue. Ms Foster: I would have to say not at all. Ms Sandom: I work for the Prison Service at the moment but that could be altering very shortly. There is this programme going through again at the moment. We had the RECs project and they have now changed the name again, it is OSLAF or something, and it is going through that and training comes under the umbrella of education. I prefer working for the Prison Service. Q1000 Mr Chaytor: But would you argue that education should be under the umbrella of the Prison Service? Ms Sandom: Yes. It used to be when I first came here that they were Prison Service employees. Q1001 Mr Chaytor: What has been lost by the contracting system? Ms Sandom: The teachers went over to Hounslow Borough College. Q1002 Chairman: In 1993. Ms Sandom: That was a couple of years after I came here. Before that time although I was employed by the Prison Service (because all instructors were) all the vocational training instructors came under the umbrella of education so it was a complicated situation because although the head of education was my immediate line manager because I was then classed as a civil servant he could not write reports on me so he had to give the information to somebody who was also a civil servant who could then write down. It was a ridiculous situation because you had to go through so many different people. I had a line manager at that time but a G4 had to write up (because he was also employed by the Home Office) my PPR appraisal form every six months at that time. I prefer working for the Prison Service. Q1003 Chairman: Do the six of you meet every day? Ms Sandom: We all see each other. We do not all know each other because there are so many staff here and, not only that, you go to your own different areas. We do meet up and obviously we would have contact, for example, if I need assistance, perhaps if I had a lad who was having difficulty because of a language problem because English was not his first language. We take them all to workshops. We hope that they can speak enough English and obviously we have to say to them providing we can get through to them the health and safety issues because we are using electrical machinery, providing we can do it with sign language, we will do it with sign language. We try not to bar anybody. Everybody is equal as far as we are concerned here. Ms Hinchcliff: There is a strong liaison between all of us in training and education. Ms Sandom: When it is actually needed we call on each other's resources. Q1004 Mr Chaytor: What happens if there is a clear conflict between the work that had been done with students in different environments because your responsibility is to the head of learning and skills within the prison presumably, and it is the education manager for NESCOT, the contract work, to whom you are responsible? If there is a fundamental conflict as to how some work is being delivered or how teachers or instructors are dealing with particular inmates, how is that resolved if you cannot resolve it one‑to‑one between yourselves? What I am getting to is is there confusion or an overlap in the line management and where do responsibilities as head of learning and skills come into conflict with the role of the education manager? Mr Hinds: It is quite a solid management structure. Anne obviously oversees the function and then within that the workshops have their own managers over there, plus they have got these two POs who operate over there as well so if they have got a problem with the discipline side of it, for example, getting prisoners to the workshops, they can go straight to them. There are education staff and education officers over there. Also the education POs co‑ordinate with them so again they have got someone to go to. If I have got a problem with anything I go straight to Anne. We do not need to do that. If I have a problem with anyone else, and touch wood, I do not, honest, if I had a problem with the library, if we clashed on something, we would discuss it and sort it out. It is pretty good like that. The learning and skills structure has come into the jail fairly recently where we have come under this umbrella and the Quality Improvement Group, that we are members of, again addresses all of that, so hopefully it is sorted before it comes to being a major problem. Q1005 Chairman: If you all got together and one of you said, "Look, I have got you all together because I think there is real potential for a course we are not doing. It is really appropriate for our people. Why don't we do it?" Could you do that? Is it possible? Could you have an impact on the curriculum? Mr Hinds: Yes. Ms Sandom: Yes, they listen to what we have got to say. If we come up with some sort of idea that is beneficial to the course we go through our direct line manager. Q1006 Chairman: Where does that go to? Does that go to straight to the Governor? Ms Sandom: My direct line manager is Barry Smith. He is workshops manager and I believe you met him this morning. He was escorting you round the workshops. Then through him to Paul Wilson who is the enterprise manager and then to Anne. That might sound a complicated system but within ten minutes you can do it, it is only a phone call away. I think we all work pretty well together in here. Q1007 Chairman: I was interested because two of the inmates said this morning they would both like to be physical exercise instructors, that was their career wish. Mr Hinds: There is no money in it! Q1008 Jonathan Shaw: Just glamour! Ms Sandom: That would not have been Levi, would it, because at one point he wanted to be the Governor but I did not worry him with it because I did not think he would make it. Q1009 Jonathan Shaw: How would you change the curriculum in the prison? How would you say, there is a course, we would really like to do this? Who would be out there looking for a partner to do it? Mr Hinds: If it is PE-related I have a free hand. Obviously I would keep Anne informed on it provided it did not impact upon any more resources. Q1010 Jonathan Shaw: What about Pat, you are mainly industrial cleaning are you not, if you said, "Look, if people go to industrial cleaning when they get out of here it is not a good enough wage so I have got an idea for something rather different," would they listen to you? Ms Sandom: Yes. I would not say I would get my own way but they would listen. Funny you saying that, we have come up with something recently. We have one instructor to six trainees whether they are juveniles or young offenders because they need the individual attention. One of the things I have been saying for such a long time is we are not getting the lads who work in our serveries on the units serving the food training in cleaning. The officers say they cannot bring them over because they need them on there to clean the unit so I came up with an idea. I do not have my group on a Friday morning and I go unit to unit and I train them on up six lads at a time. So far five units have already said it is okay. It only went out a week ago when I mentioned it to Barry and it starts this Friday and we are going to do it, so I am taking the training to the prisoners rather than them having to come to the workshop just for one morning a week. That way we introduce a bit more cleaning because it is not the easiest task to get prisoners onto because the majority of them being young men think women have smaller feet because they get closer to the kitchen sink! They tell me that quite regularly. Then we clean the blood off the wall! Seriously a lot of them because they are young men, it is like "men do not clean" for some reason. Chairman: I have got a new man to ask you a question here. Jonathan Shaw: Do you clean? Helen Jones: He even does behind the fridge. Q1011 Jeff Ennis: I did actually the other day but never mind. It is really on the organisational structure between the different players and deliverers of training. Do you have formal staff meetings as such? Ms Sandom: Yes we do within our own groups. Q1012 Jeff Ennis: Is that just within your own groups? Ms Sandom: When the Governor calls a full staff meeting, yes, and then that is anybody that works within Feltham that is available to attend will attend. Ms Chaffey: Are you talking about education and training? Q1013 Jeff Ennis: Yes. Ms Chaffey: Then we have these monthly QIG meetings where all the team leaders and everyone will come in here and sit around the board room. Q1014 Chairman: What does that stand for? Ms Chaffey: Quality Improvement Group. Q1015 Jeff Ennis: How long have you had that structure? Does that go back many years? Mr Hinds: It goes back two years. Q1016 Jeff Ennis: So it is quite a new innovation and what difference has that made? Has it made a big difference? Ms Chaffey: It means we all get to meet and talk. Ian is sitting round the table, Anne is sitting round the table, all the lead tutors, the head of learning and skills, and we all swap information. Mr Hinds: Anne herself as she gets a development plan from that group can say, "I can see where I need where to put my resources and what bids I need to put in as a whole," otherwise we all go off in different ways and come back with nothing. Q1017 Jonathan Shaw: Ian, at the beginning you talked about the changes to this institution. We are aware of the two events five years ago and there is the inquiry going on at the moment. You have said there have been changes. I have been trying to understand listening to you what are those changes and how fundamental has education and training been to those changes? Mr Hinds: We used to do over 150,000 prisoner hours/activity hours in PE a year. We did 130,000 last year. Somewhere 20,000 have gone and it is not because we have stopped working; it is because there are so many other choices going on for prisoners. They are out of their cells a lot longer now. There is a big violence reduction policy that has had a tremendous impact across the jail. 20 per cent of new prisoner officers' time is spent doing C&R. Once they have spoken to a prisoner and thought that has not worked, what is the next option: "I suppose I should do this". That is not where it should be so that has been a big push in the last nine months. There are major changes. It is a lot cleaner. It is more decent around the establishment. You walk around and people enjoy it a bit more I think. I think they are major changes. Q1018 Jonathan Shaw: What about the contribution that education and training have made? Mr Hinds: The fact you have got a whole new education block for the juvenile unit. The YJB obviously funded and put a lot of money into that but the education department was not as big as it is now and able to deliver. The Prison Service is doing a lot more contracts now. NESCOT are the education suppliers. We have got the NHS trust looking after the health care. Does that then allow the Prison Service to look after its core job? I think it does. If NESCOT do not come up with the goods the Prison Service will get another contractor in. Before it was just the Prison Service. It was under our umbrella and probably a bit too cocooned and secretive for its own good. Ms Hinchcliff: Can I add to that. In terms of achievement in education, I think nowadays there is a lot more focus on achieving targets within education accreditations and we are achieving considerably more accreditations within the department in a whole range of subjects, which I think was not so much a focus before and it has been pushed to the limelight and I suppose from our perspectives we are really seeing some results. The lads are coming through. Not only are they in a better environment on the whole through all the changes in the establishment but in education they are achieving qualifications. They are gaining so much more in terms of their whole life and social aspects as well. Ms Foster: I think that ties in with something that I mentioned to you earlier, Helen, about support for staff from the outside, from any college provider. For example, with curriculum development that is a major area and I think we try and do things ourselves but we are not entirely sure that we are doing it according to a greater plan. Helen Jones: You need to be tapped into what is going on outside. Q1019 Chairman: Why is your college not tapped into you? You are an employee. Ms Foster: I will not answer; we will all be out of a job. I do not know. I would presume that because they are providing education, we are the education department and we are left to get on with it. When certain structures are in place you will see better development and in turn the children will benefit. Again for me it is absolutely crucial that we should be given the support. It should not be something that should occur when there is a crisis or when there is an inspection looming. It should be running alongside 52 weeks of the year that we are open. Mr Hinds: There has got to be a balance as well. You raised the question about target setting and the question of balance with that. It is all about the individual, is it not, because if you set a target for so many level twos or so many level ones, when Francesca is dealing with someone who is nowhere near any of those levels, that is a bigger achievement. Chairman: We are persuaded of that. Q1020 Mr Greenway: It is quite interesting. I saw my FE college principal a couple of weeks ago and she was bemoaning the fact that they do not get as much money comparable with the schools and that is what you are saying to us post‑18. Ms Hinchcliff: The other issue is the turnover of inmates is so very high. Trying to account for added value, value add, whatever, is also a challenge because we want them to progress but we never know when they are going to suddenly disappear or when they are going to arrive and how to give them every opportunity. Giving them the opportunity to develop is also difficult because you think you are heading in the right direction and all of a sudden they disappear. Q1021 Paul Holmes: I just want to explore a little bit more about how you estimate how successful what you do is. Francesca said that in the last few years you can see there are a lot more people who have achieved accreditation at various levels so that is one measure of success. From the point of view of the inmates, do they all value what you are offering? Do they all want to take part? How big is the minority that just do not want to know or who just come along to the class to get out of the cell but to mess about? Ms Foster: Ian mentioned a while ago about the reduction in violence. Although I am new to Feltham I have seen a change already in the last six or seven months in the boys' behaviour. If their behaviour is manageable by themselves it has an impact on how they behave in education. We can do all sorts of fancy things in education but if their behaviour is really unmanageable - and we were witnessing, for example, officers having to use control and restraint on a regular basis - that has a huge impact on the education department and the boys themselves. With that violence reduction that has certainly helped on education. We can then look at what we deliver because we know that the boys are beginning to look at how they behave themselves and the output is increasing. Q1022 Paul Holmes: Can all the inmates access the courses they want? Are there waiting lists. Is there a chunk of them who just do not want to know? Ms Foster: There is a chunk that do not want to know but that is no different from colleges and schools. Ms Hinchcliff: They are all able to access education but in terms of what specific course I think perhaps with you there are certain restrictions on class sizes. Ms Sandom: We only ever have six per instructor. If there is more than one instructor you have 12 for two and 18 for three, but they have to apply on a job application form. Then information is put down about them because obviously we have got things like tools, especially in some of our departments. The bricks department has some quite horrific tools in there so you have got to be careful of that. They go from the job centre on to the security department and if there is nothing known about them that is really anything to give us cause for concern, then even if he is the most atrocious young man we have ever come across we find we challenge his behaviour in the workshops. If he is very lippy we challenge it. "Why? Have you thought of this? Have you thought of that?" And more often than not you can turn them around so they are at least reasonable. Once or twice you just do not. You get one or two that you would not anyway in life but that is life. Q1023 Paul Holmes: Is there much peer group pressure from some others to say "you should not be doing education"? One or two of the boys who gave evidence earlier said there are incidents in class where one kid will pick on another because he is a swot and he is working, and it will end up in a fight and then the officers have to called be in. Is there much of that sort of pressure? Ms Sandom: I have been here 13 and a half years and in the workshops I do not think I have pressed the alarm bell more than ten times. You are talking about less than one alarm bell a year. Mr Hinds: It is different in the workshops because they specifically apply for that. In education it is a little bit different. Ms Foster: Do we have many? Ms Flook: For boys who are more vulnerable who are liable to bullying we have a Phoenix Centre so it is a special room for vulnerable boys and also there is outreach on the units which can be done. So I do not think there is ‑‑‑ Q1024 Paul Holmes: But Francesca has said twice now it is a bit different in education to the workshops and you also said it was a bit different in other education than English as a second language so what is the problem that you keep hinting at? Ms Flook: I think in education juveniles are not applying for it. They have to come if they are not doing anything else and there are consequences for them if they do not come down to education. Ms Foster: Initially there is resistance but ‑‑‑ Q1025 Paul Holmes: At the other end of the process you have got a fair degree of enthusiasm to take part in the various courses and then you are getting more certification. How far do you know or is it just a gut feeling and can you measure where the improved education facilities that are now here lead to less reoffending or can you not quantify it in that way? Ms Hinchcliff: It is difficult to quantify. Ms Foster: Only if you read it in the reports. Ms Hinchcliff: It works on an individual basis. Mr Hinds: We only see our failures. There are the ones that come back. I have had thousands of successes because I have never seen them again but that is the only way you can see it, when the same ones come back. Q1026 Paul Holmes: There was talk in our brief about the learning mentor scheme and saying the inmates who took part in that were getting half the re‑offending rates of other inmates. Is all that sort of thing not reported back to you, how successful different things might be? Ms Sandom: On workshops we get some that we do hear about. They will phone us up and say they have got a job or they will get in touch with Connexions. That is another good agency here. We had in October an employers meeting day where all the instructors went down and we had the employers from outside who could offer them jobs provided they had done certificates of training. We had a cleaning company there and I know one or two of mine have gone for that. That does not mean to say they will not come back into a prison because a lot of it depends on they go back to the same area, back to the same friends and it all starts all over again. Q1027 Paul Holmes: One final question. When we were in Canada there was a lot of emphasis that had come down from the regional government to put much more emphasis in education into things like anger management, personal life skills, that sort of thing. Some academics told us it was a waste of time but some of the inmates we talked to said this was really good. What is the balance here between formal education, basic skills and life skills? Ms Sandom: We do the Open College Network course. That runs alongside the courses that give them some communication skills. Mr Hinds: We run an anger management course in the gym. That is a four maximum on that, very specific, very tailored. The majority is referred by the residential staff for that. Q1028 Paul Holmes: Because the Canadian example made it a condition that you took all these courses in order to get your remission time and get released early otherwise you served your full sentence. Again a couple of inmates we were talking to earlier on this morning were saying the yoga class is great, we relax, it takes the stress away, it stops us getting so angry, things like that. How important is this? Ms Chaffey: They are stopping yoga classes. Q1029 Paul Holmes: They were saying do not stop it. That is what they were telling us this morning. Ms Chaffey: I do not think the yoga classes should be stopped. Just because you cannot get an accreditation against it, it has other functions as well. You cannot accredit everything. I think it is nice to get accreditation but you should not have to accredit everything. Chairman: On that note of agreement, I would like to say thank you. It has been a very good session. We hope you will remain in contact with us. If you think of something you should have said to the Committee or we should have asked when you are away from this room please drop us a line or an e‑mail. Please keep in touch. We hope to make a very good report and it is only with your excellent evidence and frankness that we get the material to do so. Thank you.
Witnesses: Mr Brian Caton, General Secretary, Prison Officers' Association, examined. Q1030 Chairman: Brian, can I welcome you to our deliberations. You will know that we have been inquiring into prison education and skills for some weeks now. It has certainly been an area we could only get involved in fairly recently because before that it was a home affairs' bailiwick and now it is ours. So as the Committee on Education and Skills we are very keen to write a very good report and we could not do that without your help and co‑operation, so we are very delighted that you managed to see us today. We have had one of your colleagues in front of us, as you know. You and I go back quite some time. When I used to be Roy Hattersley's deputy we used to meet regularly on prison matters in obscure broadcasts on radio stations and so on, and of course with your long association with Wakefield and Yorkshire you will probably know some of the usual suspects around this table, including Jeff Ennis who I do not know if you ever had as an inmate? Mr Caton: Probably should have, Barry! Jeff Ennis: I went to Hemsworth Grammar of course in Wakefield. Q1031 Chairman: Let's get down to the business then. This is a serious inquiry and we want to write a good report. We have visited three prisons on the Isle of Wight, we have been to Reading, we have been to three prisons in Vancouver, British Columbia, we have been to a prison in Finland and a prison in Norway so we have not done bad for a shortish inquiry. We are learning quite a bit. We have talked to a lot of prison officers in our visits and made comparisons with other areas. Prison education and skills: is it going the right way? What do you think? Mr Caton: I would like to think that the way in which we are being steered currently is going to be helpful in tackling the offending behaviour, particularly of youngsters, through providing the three things that I, in my experience, find that prisoners need on release. First of all, they need somewhere to live; secondly, they need the skills for life; and thirdly they need the skills and the opportunity to get into employment as quickly as possible. Without those three areas, in my opinion, it is highly unlikely when you look at where the vast majority of prisoners come from that they will avoid falling back into the same ways that got them there in the first place. My view has always been that for those who spend so much time with prisoners, with trainees, with young people in prison, which prison officers do, to have a position where the prison officers' life skills are not utilised to the full extent and where prison officers are not actively involved in the various aspects of education, including social education, I think we are somewhat missing trick. I was very proud to join the Prison Service a fairly long time ago in 1976. I joined at a long‑term prison, a dispersal prison in Wakefield but a prison that also had the responsibility for people who were in the first part of a life sentence and were serving very long terms. Equally, I think it would be fair to say that we had a greater input at that time on the issues of making sure that prisoners were able to hit those three targets because we did a lot of re‑settlement work at that time. We did engage prison officers. Prison officers were used quite a lot in giving those pieces of social education and we were given the time to do it. I think they probably still would be given the time to do it at a place like Wakefield. If you look around Feltham and other places you will see that prison officers are pretty thin on the ground, and are probably not the same kind of prison officers that I joined with. I do not know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I swing around a bit like a pendulum on that whether it is good or bad to have more academic people as prison officers or to have more people who have their feet firmly planted on the ground, who understand the places prisoners come from because that is where they come from. I am always a little bit worried that we tend at times in education and skills to try to overreach the potential of prisoners. I think that what prisoners need more than anything is social skills because that is what they are lacking and getting them social skills and challenging their offending behaviour should be integrated into their education as well and the best people to do that are probably prison officers. If there was enough of them, if there were more of them, if there were less prisoners, if we had more community sentencing, all the things that you will hear. Some people think they are rhetorical particular from my organisation but they are not. We could do more if the resources that we have got were better used or if we had less people in prison. Q1032 Chairman: Thank you for that, Brian. What you did not mention was in a sense one thing that has been cropping up regularly within our inquiry is if you compare prison officers here with those in Nordic countries or in British Columbia where we visited, we have a very short period of training for our prison officers, and indeed witnesses have said it has been reduced in recent years by one or two weeks down to something like seven weeks for a prison officer, and someone just told us today that 20 per cent of that is restraint training. It just seems to us that there is a potential for a longer period of training or better training or up‑skilling of prison officers that perhaps you as the Prison Officers' Association should have been pushing for. Mr Caton: I believe that the evidence would support that we have. Certainly I would let the Committee have a copy of our first submission to the first Pay Review Body because it does go into quite a lot of our policies and what we have fought for over very many years. I do not believe that seven weeks is adequate for the training of a prison officer. I do not believe that 12 or 16 is; I really do not. What I believe is there are two aspects to a prison officer's job: what you are and what you are taught. People often say that we needed to change the culture away from those entering from the armed forces to one where people entered from all kinds of skills and I would not necessarily disagree with that. However, there was one thing that we made sure of when I joined the Prison Service and that was that we were able to have a disciplined and ordered way of life because without that discipline and ordered way of life in prison you will not get prisoners to respond to education and skills training. The other thing is I certainly would like to see prison officers allowed to expand their potential from day one. I would like to see the training more challenging. I would like to see the training longer. I would like to see five days of compulsory training on mental health which is what the prison officer used to get many years ago. I am a great advocate of tackling mental health in prisons. I think I have been in the forefront of putting my head down and running at the Prison Service on numerous occasions about the huge increase we have experienced in the 1970s, again in the 1980s, and since I have been General Secretary since 1999 pressing them again to make sure that our people, my Association members, are able to deal with what confronts them. Currently they are not. To try and get a young person to consider education and skills, to rehabilitate themselves, and to tackle their offending behaviour, I would suggest that you need to break down a number of barriers. The biggest barrier that we have got currently, whether it be alcohol or drug induced, is personality disorders and mental health problems. We can only tackle those firstly by identifying what we consider is wrong with the individual and then seeking to put that right. Otherwise, we are never going to jump that hurdle and get to their offending behaviour. Despite people saying drugs and drink cause these people to commit offences, I do not think we ever really find out with all individuals whether that is the case. Q1033 Chairman: You are the POA and I know of your very powerful position in that organisation over a number of years, yet here we have very short training and there is something wrong, is there not, both in terms of what we are doing if in recent years 60 per cent of your recruits have left within two years? There is something radically wrong. If you took any other profession, government department, or anything, if you look at the 60 per cent of people leaving within two years, either the recruitment was wrong or the training or induction. Something must be wrong. Mr Caton: I think there are a number of things wrong. I would say that to the Committee. Whether people will accept this from me or not is a matter for the Committee. We were a demonised trade union. We were a trade union that was anecdotally believed to be permanently on industrial action. We were seen as all powerful and dominating. We are seen as a barrier to change. We were all these things that we have seen in the press. "20 reasons why the POA should be attacked by Government." In reality, the reason that we are seen as a strong and powerful union ‑ and I do not think we are powerful, I think we are a fairly united trade union, we have our moments of course at the top of it ‑ the reason we are fairly united in that way is that we do a job where we are very much dependent on each other and we wear and uniform and that unites us. What always baffles me really being ex-Forces and having worked in a colliery where you depend on people (and I have only ever done those kinds of jobs where I depend on my friends and my work colleagues) why the Prison Service never grasps that and tries to unite us in the way that many chief constables do in the police, where they stick up for their staff and they become "their" staff. They have never managed to quite capture that. We capture it and I think the reasons why we have not been able to improve things like our training is that mandatory training for prison officers was totally axed by the Prison Service so there is no training from the centre that prison officers must do year-on-year to make sure that their skills are up to meeting the challenges against them. There is none of that because the Prison Service decided to scrap it. The reason they scrapped it is that we went to the Prison Service and said you have got too much mandatory training. You cannot have this amount of mandatory training otherwise we are never going to see a prisoner, we are going to be training all the time. Will you please compact it into what we really need to tackle what we have against us in reaching the potential and getting people trained et cetera and tackling the various aspects of the prisoner population from time to time. Will you please look at what we really need to be trained on year‑on‑year and we did say to them ‑ it is right Barry - that we want to look at the basic training for a prison officer because that needs to be somewhat different than it has been in the past. Their answer to that was to remove all mandatory training from prison officers. We have no mandatory training now whatsoever. It is left now to governors to decide at their establishment what is the priority. If somebody stands up and makes an excellent speech in the House of Commons and it becomes big headlines, then a governor will look at it and decide I will do something about that in advance because it will help my career because this is the popular and fashionable thing to start putting in, and he will train his staff in that, I would say at the expense of things we really ought to know about. So I think that the training and skills that we are able to pass down to prisoners is very much dependent on what we are taught ourselves and I do not think in my time in the Prison Service or representing prison officers, indeed people in high security psychiatric units, that we in any of those areas are actually getting the skills right. We do not seem to review the initial training and the on‑going training, the in‑service training as we used to call it, often enough and if we did I think that prison officers, provided there are enough of them and provided we had less prisoners, would be able to mirror those issues that you found in Norway and Scandinavia. We have great links with Scandinavian prisons. We understand what prison officers are doing there and in Canada and elsewhere. To be honest, I think it would be a more exciting and a better and probably a more rewarding job as a prison officer if we were able to capture those kinds of issues. Chairman: Brian, we are going to move into quick fire questions right round the Committee if you do not mind that format. I am going to start with Paul because he waited a long time in the last session. Q1034 Paul Holmes: At the start the Chairman said Norway which we visited had one year's training for prison officers, there is only seven weeks here, and you seem to have agreed that is not enough for the initial training. Then you have talked about the failings of on‑going training. What would you put into those initial and on‑going training programmes that is not there? You have mentioned mental health; what else? Mr Caton: The reason I say mental health so strongly is that the Prison Service tells us that 90 per cent of our prisoner population are suffering from some kind of mental health problem, whether it be drug induced or alcohol induced. That would have to go to the top of my agenda. I am not saying that we should be training them as registered mental nurses because I think that would be a little bit rich, but what I do think is that is high up. I also think that we have got to be able to ensure constantly that where we are using force we also are able to back that up with interpersonal skills with prisoners, being able to de-escalate things. I do not think there is enough of that in the Prison Service hence we get accused all the time of over‑use of force. I think the other thing that needs to be recognised is that we are capable of affecting the lives of those who are put in our care. Simple things. I do not think prison officers are great at writing reports any more. In fact, I think they are rubbish at writing reports. I had to write reports for a living when I was in the Army. I had to write reports when I came in the Prison Service. I thought I was pretty good and I was not because we had people who demanded that you were able to express your views about an individual in writing. I do not think they are very good at that at all. I also do not believe that the core essential things like how you treat prisoners, how you talk to prisoners, how you engage in conversation with prisoners, how you keep that distance are covered. I was told when I joined the Prison Service, "you have got to firm, you have got to be fair, and you have got to be friendly." You are never going to find anything out from them ‑ and you need that as well for security reasons ‑ unless you can use those skills. I think those skills, with the greatest respect to those who have spent years in our universities and colleges ‑ are not learned there. They are people skills and you learn them in the "university of hard knocks". The vast majority of people that we have in prison are not the kind of people who you would sit around years ago listening to Deep Purple with on the floor of a campus in a university. They are not those kind of people; they are "hard knock" people. Q1035 Paul Holmes: So mental health, inter‑personal skills, and report writing? Mr Caton: Yes. Q1036 Jeff Ennis: On The NOMS situation, your trade union proposed a resolution at the TUC conference last year to oppose the setting up of NOMS which is to provide an extra element of after care for the prisoner. That is what the whole ethos of that is anyway. I am just wondering what the current situation is and why the Prison Officers' Association is so opposed to NOMS. I suppose it is a privatisation issue to some extent? Mr Caton: It is a layer of bureacracy too far. We have always said that we wanted to work closer with our colleagues in the Probation Service and in the Health Service and in social services to make sure that we joined up the system. If you go back two and three TUCs you will see that both ourselves and NAPO, the representative body for probation officers, called upon having a justice ministry. We called upon there being attendance centres, not the old attendance centres where you went on a Saturday afternoon and scrubbed floors but where we could go, reach out and prevent people having to be held in prison to teach them and to put forward the challenging offending behaviour programmes that when we can do them we do in prison so that we use the complete skills. So I think there is a misguided view, probably because the press seem to pick up on some of the things we say and not others. The output that is being sought by Government through NOMS we are 110 per cent behind. The bureaucracy and the way in which it is being dealt with through NOMS we are absolutely opposed to because we do not think we will ever get there. I know a previous Home Secretary said to me he did not know why the POA were putting forward we should have a justice system because the only organisations that were saying that were Liberty and JUSTICE and he was sure we did not want the POA linked with those organisations. We do and we get on very well. This is another myth that we do not get on well with voluntary agencies; we do and we continue to work very carefully with them. We believe it is a layer of bureaucracy too far and we believe there are better ways of doing it than building an empire in order to deliver something that could be quite easily done with little cost and by people being trusted to go on and do those kinds of things. Q1037 Jeff Ennis: So your alternative model then is to use the existing structure with some fine‑tuning, shall we say? Mr Caton: Again I reach back into history. We used to have a considerable amount of prison officers working alongside probation officers inside prison. We used to have detachments from the prison to the probation service where we worked sometimes for four to six weeks seeing what probation officers did and they did the same. We do not think that there is a huge gap between what we want to do together with NAPO and its membership to that that is being proposed by NOMS. I have to say that NOMS in the eyes of my membership is purely about two things: Market testing and privatisation, full stop. It is not about anything else. It is about privatising even more and we resist and will continue to resist, at times very rigorously indeed, the privatisation of the justice system. We think it is wrong. We think it is morally repugnant, to use Jack Straw's expression. Chairman: I do not want to get too far down that track but thank you very much for that. John? Q1038 Mr Greenway: A couple of things. Can we deliver education and the life skills for work with short‑term prisoners or prisoners being moved all over the estate all of the time? Do you have a view on the effectiveness of detention and training orders and what happens to those prisoners who have had them post release? Mr Caton: If I can deal with the issue of prisoners. We used to transfer prisoners to give them skills. We now transfer them so that denies them skills and learning. That is not the fault of the Prison Service. I am sure that Phil Wheatley, whom we get on very well with, and Martin Narey and all the people who are helping to run the Prison Service do not want to shift people up and down the country. We shift them up and down the country for no good reason really, apart from we have no spaces, yet by the same token we are actually mothballing some places in the Prison Service. I find that very strange indeed. Perhaps somebody would explain it to prison officers eventually. In that first instance I do not think that we can deliver the continuity that is necessary for people to learn, bearing in mind our clientele. One thing we need is continuity with them. In regard to short‑term prisoners it is a waste of time. I cannot understand why we bring them into prison, only to tap them on the head, put them in a cell, make sure they get bathed and shaved, which is a fairly good thing, make sure they clean their cells, and then send them back onto the streets. It seems to me a total waste of taxpayers' money and it is a waste of our members' time. We cannot get our teeth into the issues of their offending behaviour if they are only there for a short period of time. I think I would beef up the detention and training orders. Q1039 Mr Greenway: You think they are too soft? Mr Caton: I think they are too soft, yes. I think actually ‑ it is a big debate and I do not know whether I want to enter into it ‑ the act of imprisonment is about causing people to change. I do not think that there has been a sufficient debate on whether prison is actually punishing at all when people who come into prison, when you look at their outside life, better off through that act of imprisonment than they would be outside. Some of them are given (in part) more freedom inside than they would on the outside because of their dependence on drugs, alcohol, the fact they are under threat, the fact they are severe debt most of the time. They come into prison and it is ‑‑‑ Q1040 Mr Greenway: --- It is an oasis. Mr Caton: Yes, it is an oasis away from it and it is seen that way. I just wish we could make them drink the water and eat the fruit while they are in the oasis and we cannot do that if they are only stopping for a couple of weeks. Q1041 Mr Chaytor: You talked about the changes you would like to see in the training of prison officers and you mentioned improved understanding of mental health and improved inter‑personal skills for dealing with conflict and improved report writing. Are these not exactly the sort of skills that those who spent their early 20s sitting around listening to Deep Purple public are more likely to have? Is there not a contradiction, on the one hand you are praising the school of hard knocks but on the other hand you are saying your lads need some of the more sophisticated language skills that will defuse conflict? Mr Caton: I do not think because someone has been to a university they are incapable of being a prison officer. I do not believe that. I have plenty of friends who have got university degrees and who are prison officers and very good at it. Q1042 Chairman: And are quite sensible? Mr Caton: And are sensible. They might not sit around smoking pot and listening to Deep Purple. Some of them are not sensible. Yes, I think that the skills that are needed may well come from all walks of life. What I am trying to say is that I do not think that we are necessarily selecting or attracting people who at the end of the day have got the ability to stand nose to nose with a multiple murderer to say, "Get in your cell," but by the same token they can probably sit and talk very reasonably to reasonable people when they are behaving reasonably. At the end of the day, as I have said on many occasions, I spent 28 days at the Strangeways riot and t people told me that was caused by there not being enough activity in Strangeways. It was not. It was caused by a lack of staff. They tell me that it was caused because they were not able to challenge the prisoner by giving them courses testing their skills and testing their learning ability. When the roof came off that place I could have called up there, "Come down for your GCE now," and they would not have come down. That is a fact. What we have got to have in the Prison Service is order and discipline because if you lose order and discipline you can have as many good educational courses as you like you are not going to get them to do it. If I can exemplify that here. I know here this is a good education. I have got loads of paper telling me it is a good education. I have not been to Feltham for a number of years. The last time I came here I told them there was a ligature point in one of the cells and they ignored it and then a young chap hung himself on it. Fact. I am not suggesting they are whitewashing the coal either here but I do know there are people on education here that stand and look out the windows all the time they are in those classes. What I would say even now is, "Get away from the window, sit there, you are here to learn," because sometimes, as has been said by the current Government and the current Secretary of State for Education, there is a need to have a little bit more robust discipline in the classroom. When you consider that most of the people that we get in here are those who have failed in the classroom, failed in health, failed at home; we get them and we have got to try and turn them into a success. You cannot do that by sitting and talking nicely to them in the first instance. They have got to understand they are in a disciplined environment. If they do not understand that you may as well pack in and go home. Q1043 Mr Chaytor: Do you think it is right that there is no minimum educational qualification for a prison officer? Is that an advantage to the profession and the status of prison officers, quite apart from the quality of work in the prisons? Mr Caton: We tried it and it did not do much at all. Q1044 Chairman: Tried what? Mr Caton: We tried having a minimum standard of education, five O‑levels. We then had to collapse it in the South because we could not get those kind of people to apply so you got people with the equivalent of five O‑levels in the North but in the South you would accept two arms, two legs and if you could nod your head twice, come in. I mean that genuinely. We were that short of prison officers that we had to collapse it in one part of the country. Those who came in with two arms, two legs and who could nod their head twice were not necessarily bad prison officers because I do not think it is really about the educational skills that you possess, although there should be a level by which you can come in. I have seen people come into the Prison Service as prison officers who have got degrees. Put them on a landing and tell them to count counts 52 cells, it will take them hours. Ask them to engage in a prisoner that is barricaded in his own cell and say, "I want you to talk to that person, find out what their problems are and get him out of there because we cannot disrupt a prison in that way, "you could put them there for the next 72 years, if they live that long, and they would not get the person out. It is a very special kind of person you are picking. The biggest problem ‑ and I have said it on numerous occasions and on radio and television as well, Barry - is if you do not sit people down and interview them and challenge what they are saying. We are not interviewing prison officers currently. They come through a JSAC (?) where if you have got an equity card you will get in as a prison officer, if you are doing amateur dramatics and play the part correctly you will get in because that is what the JSAC is, it is about testing whether you can react in a playette kind of situation. What they do not do is sit them down one side of the table or the other and ask them questions. That is how I was interviewed. Q1045 Mr Chaytor: We have got a situation now in the United Kingdom where school leavers' qualifications are increasing year‑on‑year, where the number of jobs that do not require qualifications is shrinking, where the CBI is saying in ten years' time there will be no jobs for anybody without formal qualifications. There will come a point where one of the only jobs that requires no formal qualifications for entering is a prison officer. How can that be in the interests of your Association? Mr Caton: I do not believe that formal qualifications and pieces of paper mean a great deal. Q1046 Mr Chaytor: If to be a cleaner you need an NVQ1 industrial cleaners' certificate, if to work in a kitchen you need an NVQ1 in dishwashing and cooking, you see what I am saying. Mr Caton: I understand that. Q1047 Mr Chaytor: In five years, less perhaps, this could be the only significant occupational group that does not have a basic minimum entry requirement. What are the implications of that to the status of the profession? Mr Caton: I understand the drift. What I would say about this is give us our own. It is very much like delivering health care which has just been handed over to the NHS. It will not work. It will fail in the Prison Service because the Prison Service is a very unique environment. Give us a qualification that prison officers have to aspire to, and make sure that you test them correctly on everything. Do not let them go away and play a game in a wing office on whether they can deal with a violent prisoner when they are not even in the job. Test them and give them a qualification that is unique to that particular role. Being a prison officer is a unique job. Is not something that is easily learnt and I do not think it necessarily follows that if you can get through a Masters degree or get an honorary doctorate in the study of mental health and crime like me that you necessarily would make a good prison officer. I know what made me a good prison officer. I was bought up in a mining community, I joined the army, I came out of the army, I studied very hard to get in the Prison Service. I was not a brilliant academic but I knew how to talk to people, I knew how to read people, and I knew how to motivate people. I know car salesmen who would be as good if not better prison officers than me. It is the type of person. They are patient. What I would advise, if the Prison Service wants to do it, is that they look at Alison Liebling's book The Prisoner Officer and see what she says prison officers do in their working life and that is deescalating disputes between prisoners, understanding human beings, understanding human behaviour, not necessarily from an academic perspective but certainly from that kind of street level. Q1048 Mr Chaytor: Just a final point; is it part of your Association's policy to call for such a unique entry qualification? Mr Caton: We have called for it for many years. We called for it in the specialisms. We wanted a diploma in prison nursing. We wanted a diploma, which eventually we got, for medical officers in prison. We wanted a diploma that said that people can manage in prisons. We have been able to do that in a lot of cases but the foot soldiers on the landings, in the house blocks and working in the units here are most of the time overlooked. Their skills and their professionalism is overlooked. We do not get recognition. For Christ's sake, we never got the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal when everybody else did. We are seen as the forgotten army in more ways than one. People talk to me about why do prison officers leave. Paul Boateng said I could have the money tomorrow. I just had to convince Tessa Jowell to give us the Queen's Golden Jubilee medal. We never got it. People keep telling me at the Treasury and Cabinet Office, "What we want, Brian, is to reward you people in non‑financial ways as well as financial ways." We gave them a perfect opportunity. Pin a medal on everybody who has done over five years in the Prison Service to commemorate the Queen's Golden Jubilee. It would have lifted the morale of the Prison Service no end. No. No excuse, no reason, nothing given to us. When I try and push it it becomes no because somebody said apparently very early on in the consideration "I am not giving it to those people", because that is how we are seen a lot of the time - "those people". Q1049 Helen Jones: Two quick questions, Brian. You talked about the workforce becoming more academic. Can you just explain to us exactly what you mean by that. What is the current qualification make‑up of the workforce? Given that you do not have to have any qualifications to come in how is it becoming more academic. The second question to save a bit of time, if you do not have to have any basic qualifications to become a prison officer, not even measuring fairly basic literacy and numeracy skills, how can we then rely on prison officers to encourage education in prisons? If we want them to play a part in encouraging that themselves ‑ and I certainly do ‑ and we are recruiting people without any basic qualifications how can those two marry up? Mr Caton: I am not saying that people should not have basic qualifications. I think they should. My daughter who is currently finishing off a doctorate in dietary psychology said to me the other day, "What year was the First World War then?" So when people talk to me about basic education I find it a little bit difficult that she has gone through all the years of academia and then has to ask her father when the First World War ended because she was reading a book. Q1050 Helen Jones: History courses tend to run from the rise of Hitler onwards. Mr Caton: I did know, by the way, I could answer that and you would expect me to because I had an old‑fashioned education. I think that what prisoners rely on when they are looking at it is people whom they can respect. The respect that they show for professionals is short‑lived. The reason I can say that is professionals that visit prisons and work in prisons start at nine (ten), leave at five (four). I did not. I was there on night duty, I was there when I was working away from prison because we were paid overtime at the time, from 6.40 in the morning until 9.15 at night on most days. I earned a fortune in overtime but I was there all the time. When people talk about what influences prisoners most it is probably prison officers. Educationally, yes, I believe there should be a solid standard of educational qualifications to be a prison officer but currently my view is that those who are entering the Prison Service are seeing the Prison Service as a very, very quick route to manage. A policeman once said to me when we had a multiple murderer we were taking to court at Sheffield: "I have not joined the police to be a policeman. I have joined it to manage policemen." I think we have got too many people joining the Prison Service to manage prison officers. Not enough of them want to come in and be prison officers. Q1051 Helen Jones: What are the figures on the entry? Mr Caton: I do not know. I would be guessing and I would not want to mislead the Committee at all. Q1052 Helen Jones: If you have that information later on and can give it to us that would be very useful Mr Caton: Sure. Q1053 Chairman: Brian, one of the witnesses we had earlier said because of this dilemma that you very honestly put to the Committee, that in a sense the prison officer becomes isolated, here he is, as you have just described, working long hours making sure there is security in the place, which is essential, the backbone of the whole thing and people come in and come out and in a sense the missing dimension is that when you come into a prison perhaps the prison officer is not included in the full team. I think what David and Helen's question was asking is without the training and up‑skilling they are denied being part of the team. One of the wonderful things we have seen is the Toe by Toe. Mr Caton: We support that. Q1054 Chairman: Numerous prison officers are involved and you were involved in it. That seems to some of us the best kind of relationship. Mr Caton: I think, Chairman, if I can explain it like this: there are those who come into prison because there is strange shroud of darkness over prisons and they want to come in and try and play with it. Prison officers in the main come to work to look after prisoners, to make sure prisoners are looked after, to make sure the security of the establishment happens, and it is very difficult for a prison officer whose feet are firmly planted on the ground to deal with this floating academia that drifts in and drifts out and when it settles it grows. The psychology departments in our prisons have grown beyond all recognition. There is a comment in one of the Chief Inspector's reports into Wakefield Prison on how come it has grown that big. If you leave it without challenging it as a prison governor, which some prison governors have in Wakefield, then it will grow. When I worked at Wakefield when principal officers were in charge of wings and we had an old‑fashioned 30 years serving principal officer on a wing, he would make sure that you did discuss things with the psychology department, that you did discuss things with the wing probation officers, and that we met together and we did have teams. I do not know how often people have given evidence to this Committee and said that it is a team effort. It is a team effort and we should try whenever possible to work as teams. We used to work very well as teams even down to the socialising. If we had a Christmas do we did not just go out as a group of prison officers, which seems to be the model now. We went out and we had a meal or a function at Christmas and one in the summer and we had probation officers with us and we had psychologists with us because we worked together as a team. In some places that works well. In some I think it fails badly. I am a bit worried that I might not have expressed myself well enough in regard to academics working in prison. I declare a position that I have seen academics mess things up so much in prisons that I am probably a little bit anti‑academia, but I know their worth --- Q1055 Helen Jones: One would not have guessed that! Mr Caton: But I know their worth and they are fine but they are not fine giving prisoners false expectations and giving prisoners the wrong words because at the end of the day ‑ and I say this quite often ‑ they might want to dash in and grip a prisoner's hand and say, "Well done, you have got parole" but what happens when the parole board says, "No, we are not releasing him"? I will tell you what happens then ‑ you cannot find him at all. It is left to a prison officer to say, "Sorry kid, you have not got parole," because they do not want the hard knock and that is the hard knock that is the hard end of being a prison officer. It is saying "Sorry kid, you have not got parole" and then knowing that the guy might hang himself, he might attack you, he might attack another prisoner, he might attack his wife, he might beat his kids on their visits, he might try to escape, and one thing that is certainly true in those circumstance is that when you look over your shoulder it is a very empty room that you are in; you are left on your own. So please accept the reason that I am little bit suspicious about other professionals in prison. Yes, we can work well together but we need to work together, not leaving the bad parts of working in a prison and working with prisoners just to prison officers. I am a great believer in team work. Q1056 Chairman: So that would be your strongest message to the Committee, that this is a team effort? Mr Caton: Absolutely and it is a team effort, if I can say, that goes wider than just those who are working in prison. It is a team effort that should be about voluntary agencies, it should be all the things that NOMS says it wants it to be about. If you go into a private prison ‑ and I have no doubt the Committee will want to go and look at private prisons - you will find less involvement from the voluntary sector than there is in state sector prisons yet we are expected to accept that NOMs is about engaging the voluntary sector. We engage with them regularly. We sit on committees with them. We work very well with the Prison Reform Trust and the Howard League, all the major groups that are seen as pressure groups at times but are voluntary agencies. I sit on the Royal London Society which seeks in this area particularly to provide money for people and I allocate the money on that organisation to make sure that prisoners get that start by providing them with work clothes, tools, whatever, providing them with courses and training. We support very strongly the work that is going on with Transco where you have got a massive shortage of pipe fitters. We have said that and sat on the same fringe meetings at political conferences and at the TUC. So we want to be actively involved in making sure that those three key things that people need are delivered. It is not going to help them if they leave prison having got a degree in Russian but it is going to help them if they can go out and they can fit a pipe and it gives them a job. The other thing is the stability they need not to go back on drugs, not to get involved in alcohol, and also to try and tackle the mental health problems. I think those are the big things. Q1057 Chairman: Brian, this has been an excellent session. Can we remain in contact as we begin to write up the report? Mr Caton: Yes indeed and thank you very much for inviting me.
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