Joint memorandum submitted by the Department
for Education and Skills and the Home Office
INTRODUCTION
1. The Committee reported on Prison Education
in March 2005, and the Government published its response in June
2005. Considerable further progress has been made since then,
and the Government welcomes the Committee's renewed interest.
This memorandum outlines recent progress in key areas, and looks
ahead to further reform. Where relevant the text refers to recommendations
in the Committee's March 2005 report, but does not seek to address
again every recommendation.
THE GOVERNMENT'S
STRATEGY FOR
REDUCING RE
-OFFENDING THROUGH
SKILLS AND
EMPLOYMENT
2. The Government welcomed the Committee's
focus on learning and skills for offenders in prison. The Government's
response of June 2005 made clear that there was a broad shared
agenda to improve the quality and responsiveness of learning and
skills for offenders, and to help them get sustainable jobs on
release from custody, to the benefit of the individuals, their
families, and wider society. There were differences of view, however,
about the extent to which reform and improvement was under way,
and the clarity and energy of the Government strategy for change.
It is these areas that we focus on in this memorandum.
3. Since the Committee last examined this
area of policy there have been several important developments.
These include:
The Green Paper Reducing Re-offending
through Skills and Employment
4. Published in December 2005 by the Departments
for Education and Skills and Work and Pensions, and the Home Office,
the Green Paper set out a reform strategy designed to help more
offenders gain skills and jobs, as part of the wider Government
strategy to reduce re-offending. The Green Paper set out the challenge
of tackling offenders' skills and employment needs and proposed
action in four main areas:
— a strong focus on employment, with
employers leading the design and delivery of programmes;
— ensuring that training providers
and colleges were better able to provide the skills offenders
need to get a job;
— a new emphasis at the heart of prisons
and probation services on helping offenders improve their skills
and get jobs; and
— motivating and engaging offenders,
with a strong package of rights and responsibilities including
a new "employability contract".
5. Consultation on the Green Paper showed
broad support for the strategy. A summary of the feedback is available
on the DfES website at http://www.dfes.gov.uk.
6. The Government is considering how best
to push forward further progress with the strategy, in the light
of consultation, and will announce future plans shortly.
Reformed delivery of learning and skills for offenders
7. Within the framework provided by the
Green Paper strategy, reform of delivery of education and training
by the Learning and Skills Council is beginning to have a significant
impact. The Offender Learning and Skills Service (OLASS) was rolled
out across England from July 2006, building on lessons learned
in the three development regions in operation since August 2005.
8. The significance of the OLASS reform
should not be underestimated. Two years ago the offender learning
service was delivered through a series of contracts covering prisons
only; with vocational training separated from education; with
providers often struggling to meet external inspection standards,
delivering a service that was too often unresponsive to individual
needs.
9. The reform of delivery under OLASS, led
by the LSC, has laid the foundation for a step change in educational
outcomes and progression into other opportunities and employment,
with:
— a refreshed set of providers, delivering
a wider curriculum choice, set out in the Offender's Learning
Journey, with greater integration between custody and community;
— more intensive focus on individual
learning needs, embodied in individual learning plans, with better
information, advice and guidance and training better tailored
to the labour market; and
— partnerships with regional offender
managers, in order to support a better "fit" between
learning and skills programmes and the operation of prisons and
probation services.
10. Of course, engagement of new providers
is to some extent the beginning, not the end, of the process of
improving delivery and outcomes. Nevertheless, there are encouraging
signs, not least from recent inspection evidence, that the Government's
investment and reform strategy for offender learning and skills
is having a positive impact.
Stronger partnerships, nationally, regionally
and locally
11. The national Reducing Re-offending Delivery
Plan published in November 2005 outlined cross-government progress
and set out key further actions for the Government and its partners
across a range of services including education, training and employment.
At the same time, a reducing re-offending Corporate Alliance was
launched to signal the critical importance of engaging with employers
to support more offenders gaining sustainable work.
12. The Government considers this area to
be a notable example of cross-government working. Effective action
to address offenders' skills and employment needs, within the
context of a strategy to reduce re-offending, cannot be undertaken
by one organisation alone. It must be built upon strong partnership,
from national to local level. The National Offender Management
Service's (NOMS) nine Regional Offender Managers (ROMs) in England
and Director of Offender Management in Wales have all published
regional reducing re-offending strategies across a range of key
services and have embedded close partnership working through regional
partnership boards and networks.
13. The OLASS reforms have also helped to
foster new partnerships at regional level, involving in particular
the LSC, regional offender managers and Jobcentre Plus. At national
level, DfES, DWP and Home Office drive the skills and employment
programme through a joint board, with a new inter-ministerial
group, jointly chaired by Baroness Scotland and Phil Hope, overseeing
the whole reducing re-offending strategy.
PROGRESS ON
THE COMMITTEE'S
AREAS OF
INTEREST
A. Purpose, Strategy and Leadership
At the time of its report in March 2005,
the Committee expressed concern that the purpose of education
for offenders in prison should be very clear, in particular its
role in rehabilitation, with a clear strategy across government
for reform and delivery. The Committee also expressed support
for a broader focus than, for example, basic skills. (Committee
recommendations 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 20, 21, 22, 32 and 36)
14. The Reducing Re-offending through
Skills and Employment Green Paper set out the Government's
view of the crucial role skills and employment can play within
the wider government strategy to reduce re-offending. The Green
Paper proposals built on evidence that a key factor in reducing
re-offending is employment. Accordingly, the focus was on motivating
and engaging offenders, better equipping them with job-related
skills, and connecting them to employment opportunities. The proposals
were largely endorsed in consultation.
15. Following up the Green Paper is a genuinely
cross-government exercise, led by the new inter-ministerial group
chaired by Baroness Scotland and Phil Hope. DfES, Home Office
and DWP, with key operational partners including LSC, NOMS, HMPS,
NPS and Jobcentre Plus are collaborating on a new "Offender
Skills and Employment" programme to deliver the strategy.
We expect to announce plans for next steps shortly. As a key partner
of DfES, LSC now includes offender learning in its own Statement
of Priorities.
16. While rates of re-offending remain high,
and evidence shows that job-related skills and employment can
have a significant impact on steering people away from crime,
the rationale for focusing on activity that equips offenders to
join and stay in the labour market is clear. Failure to address
the substantial literacy, language and numeracy needs among offenders
would prevent individuals from benefiting from many work-related
learning or employment opportunities (or to broader or higher
study). Recent research from the National Research and Development
Centre (NRDC) has confirmed the positive impact of embedding basic
skills in training and work.
17. Offender learning has adopted the learning
and qualification targets used in all learning and skills provision,
bringing it closer to the mainstream as the LSC has taken planning
and funding responsibility. That said, the requirements for offender
learning outlined in the "Offender's Learning Journey"
(see Section B below) do offer a wide curriculum based on the
identified individual needs of each offender. The Government recognises
that some individuals may be initially engaged in learning only
through other subjects, and that "soft skills" developed
in these other contexts can be applied to employment too.
B. Content And Standards
As was clear from the Committee's 2005 report,
and the Government's response, there is a broad shared agenda
to improve the standards and outcomes from offender learning services.
Key elements of that agenda included the need to improve assessment
of offenders' education needs, develop more flexible and relevant
delivery, and increase the quality and range of provision, with
greater opportunities to continue learning on release. (Committee
recommendations 8-12, 16, 18, 19, 33, 34, 37, 46-49)
18. These issues are at the heart of the
reforms to deliver a better and more coherent Offenders' Learning
and Skills Service (OLASS) through the LSC. After successful testing
in three development regions, the new model was rolled out to
all English regions in July 2006. The reforms are already driving
significant improvements in quality and delivery, for example:
— Better assessment and planning—OLASS
ensures an early, intense focus on assessing individual learners'
needs, providing advice and guidance and the development of an
individual learning plan (ILP) within the wider sentence plan.
LSC planning and use of labour market information is improving
alignment of learning to the needs of the offenders' home labour
market, with different physical environments, and specific needs
(such as those of women or people with learning difficulties),
being taken into account in tailoring training provision to meet
needs. The NFER report The Impact of OLASS: An assessment of
its impact one year on noted that over half of respondents
reported improvements in the assessment process.
— Wider curriculum choice—The
Offender's Learning Journey sets out the offer to individuals
from the first engagement with learning through to job opportunities,
and supports progression between prison, probation and mainstream
learning. It has clear quality requirements and its delivery is
a contractual requirement on all OLASS providers. Offenders will
also benefit from the forthcoming overhaul of the National Qualifications
Framework, to create a flexible, unit-based Qualifications and
Credit Framework capable of recognising most types of achievement
and building credit towards qualifications. Offenders are included
in the first trials, currently under way.
— Mainstreamed delivery—OLASS
providers operate within the framework of mainstream post-16 learning,
offering offenders better access to a broad range of mainstream
provision. Offenders are designated an LSC priority, meaning that
they benefit from the Skills Strategy policy of targeting resources
on those most in need to make them employable. The NFER evaluation
of OLASS reported that some 60% of interviewees signalled that
there had been "some" or "much improvement"
in the integration of services. Improved links between community
providers and those operating in the custody setting were seen
as crucial in improving consistency and continuity. One example
cited was the employment of mentors (funded through a mainstream
provider) beginning to establish relationships with offenders
in custody, then ensuring support systems and continuing education
opportunities were in place immediately on release.
— Regional Offender Learning Partnership
Boards—These alliances of key stakeholders brought together
to oversee the education, training and employment strand of the
regional "Reducing Re-offending" strategy are now bedded
in. As the OLASS reform has shown, the combined commissioning
roles of the NOMS Regional Offender Managers and the LSC play
a critical role in the planning and management of the new OLASS
delivery arrangements.
— Strengthened external inspection
arrangements—Inspection of prison education by the Adult
Learning Inspectorate (ALI) has had a powerful effect, applying
common standards across custody, community and mainstream adult
learning. This has been challenging, and initially overall inspection
grades for prisons were significantly weaker than for other providers.
But there are strong signs of improvement in this sector during
the last 18 months, evidenced by the increase in the number of
prisons achieving a satisfactory inspection result from ALI—in
2005-06 the number of such inspections had almost doubled, to
84%, from the previous year's figure of 45%. A recent issue of
the ALI's Talisman journal focused on offender learning,
highlighting the improvements made and carrying many positive
examples.
19. A long-standing issue for prison education
has been the challenge of ensuring effective capture of learning
and skills data that stays with offenders as they move through
the criminal justice system. Solving this problem—which
has hampered the service for years—requires not only the
development of a new information management system, but investment
in new infrastructure across the prison and probation services.
In this there are significant challenges, given for example the
security environment involved. But meeting this challenge is undoubtedly
critical to the effective operation of the new learning and skills
service. And the solution must be workable within the wider context
of significant change to offender management systems. NOMS is
introducing C-NOMIS, which is a core business management information
system designed to ensure consistency of records across prisons
and probation areas. However, functionality to manage learning
and skills will not be available in sufficient detail in the initial
release and the required learning plan management functionality
is unlikely to have sufficient priority to be included in the
near future. C-NOMIS will not be used to manage Juvenile Offenders
and will not hold their details.
20. Against that background, the LSC of
course has an immediate need for a national solution that will
be able to support the Offender's Learning Journey, eradicate
duplication of effort and improve the quality of the information
captured. The LSC are in the process of producing the final specification
for a new Offender Learning Database, and have secured broad agreement
from partners to go out to procurement early in the new year.
Technical options are being designed in conjunction with NOMS
and the system is likely to have the capacity to hold ILP information
on all offenders. The system will manage the ILP of each offender
undergoing learning within the Prison and Probation Services in
England and Wales, both publicly and privately managed. The system
will in time interface with C-NOMIS and the YJB's eASSET.
21. In the interim, to cover the gap until
this national data system is in place, the LSC introduced the
Maytas system in the three original OLASS pilot regions; in the
remaining six, the LSC has developed a Learning Summary Record
template for use by all providers to assist the movement of learner
information by email around the OLASS system. It is designed to
record the "core" ILP elements required to capture adequate
details for teaching and learning.
C. Funding And Access
The Government's response to the Select Committee
in June 2005 set out our approach to reforming funding of offender
learning and improving access to learning for offenders with skills
needs. (Committee recommendations 13, 14, 15, 25, 26 and 27)
22. Resources will never match the demand
for learning: that is as true of offender learning as it is in
any other area of education. We need, therefore, to target
carefully our use of resources. That means making sure we
have resource for delivering learning in custodial settings allocated
to the right places with prisons that mostly hold prisoners on
remand, on very short sentences or temporarily pending allocation
elsewhere focusing on assessing learning need, providing information
and guidance, and formalising conclusions from those processes
in an Individual Learning Plan. Prisons where offenders serve
the bulk of their sentences should expect to receive transferring
inmates with learning needs already assessed—and their main
focus will be on the delivery of learning to meet those needs.
23. Targeting of resources in this way will
be supported by the offender management process, so that learning
is properly sequenced in the sentence plan, ensuring work skills
remain up to date and that basic Skills for Life needs are met
early on so that other regime services and programmes become more
accessible.
24. The Green Paper Reducing Re-Offending
Through Skills and Employment also set out for consultation
the notion of an employability contract. Through this a set of
commitments and responsibilities to which the offender signs up
are mirrored by a more intense learning and skills delivery process
that provides enhanced access to employer-linked activity such
as job-search, work trials and guaranteed interviews. The rights
and responsibilities aspects of this—through which we will
be able to ensure high-quality services are focused on those who
commit to seeing the process through—are critical means
by which we will ensure we achieve best value for money for the
taxpayer's investment.
25. Through OLASS we are working towards
arrangements whereby funding for offender learning mirrors mainstream
adult learning arrangements as closely as possible, while recognising
the inherent practical and logistical difficulties in delivery
in custodial settings, such as accommodation, free learner movement
and security constraints. A phased introduction will lead to application
across the sector from the summer of 2009. The White Paper Skills:
Getting on in Business, Getting on at Work promised national
rollout of an entitlement to free tuition for a first full Level
2 qualification, and this offer applies to all qualifying offenders.
D. Links with Employers and The Labour Market
An important thread of the Committee's 2005
report, welcomed by the Government, was the emphasis on the importance
of skills training for employment, and links with employers. This
is an area in which very significant progress has been made. (Committee
recommendations 38, 39, 40, 41, 42 and 45)
26. Evidence confirming the impact of work-related
skills and jobs in deflecting people away from re-offending provided
the rationale for the Green Paper's strong focus on these areas.
It outlined the aspiration to make all education and work interventions,
in prison and on release, work together in a planned and integrated
way in pursuit of employment goals, to inject more external realism
and relevance into the prison work regime, and to align skills
development more closely with labour market needs.
27. The Green Paper had at its heart the
need to work in partnership with employers, involving them in
the design and delivery of learning and influencing them to consider
offenders as potential recruits. Focusing on sectors with skill
shortages and recruitment difficulties gives offenders the best
chance of sustainable employment, and regional Reducing Re-offending
Partnership Boards have access to current information on regional
and local labour market needs to improve their targeting.
28. Integration of education and vocational
training is one of the main benefits of the new OLASS arrangements,
with all prison workshops whose primary purpose is skills development
transferring to LSC funding. The NFER evaluation of OLASS records
that some 50% of interviewees felt there had been improvement
in the employment focus of provision in custody, due to an increase
in vocational courses on offer, employer engagement and involvement
and specialist posts and initiatives. The study also noted: "[...]
provision since OLASS was seen to have included an increased involvement
of employers and/or the increasing development of strategies to
include employers to a greater extent. In particular, attempts
were being made to ascertain more clearly the skills that employers
required, in order to employ offenders in the future. For example,
whilst offenders might, through workshop instruction, develop
a high level of competency in bricklaying, it was asserted that
the speeds required by an employer might be lacking. Hence, dialogue
between employers and education providers was seen as being of
great importance."
29. The Reducing Re-offending Corporate
Alliance launched by the National Offender Management Service
in November 2005 builds on the work of prisons and probation to
enlist employers of all sizes from the public, private and voluntary
sectors to promote positive messages to their peers about offenders
as potential recruits and to implement a menu of actions to help
offenders into work (including self-employment as an option).
The Alliance will also act as an "umbrella" for collecting
and spreading effective practice, making the most of existing
activity, and encouraging joint independent action by employers
(for example, exploring the use of Train to Gain with offenders).
30. We hope to explore options for different
forms of work for offenders, in custody and the community, representing
various levels of commitment by employers, and expect to say more
about these plans soon.
31. The Green Paper introduced the concept
of Job Developers to act as brokers between employers with vacancies
and providers of learning for offenders, offering relationship
management, advice and support for them and for regional Corporate
Alliance partners and Jobcentre Plus. Operating under the aegis
of the National Employment Panel's Employer Coalitions, the first
prototype was launched in Liverpool in November this year, and
others will be introduced in up to five more of the NEP's Coalition
locations next year. To complement the Job Developers, Jobcentre
Plus is running demonstration projects in the same proposed locations
to change the balance of pre-release advice, moving the emphasis
from benefits to job opportunities.
E. Workforce Development
An important strand of reform of the delivery
of offender learning and skills, given prominence in the Green
Paper, is the need for progressive development of the offender
learning and correctional services workforces. (Committee recommendations
23, 24, 28-30, 53 and 54)
32. It is clear that the OLASS reforms have
stimulated a new focus on workforce development in a field where
some staff in the past felt isolated and marginalised. Staff feedback
in the NFER evaluation of OLASS cited increased opportunities
for professional development as one of the positive impacts of
the reforms. Employed by providers straddling offender and mainstream
learning, staff can benefit from professional development initiatives,
and prison tutors are joining their colleagues across the adult
learning sector in coaching programmes and subject networks. DfES
is working with QIA and Lifelong Learning UK to scope the initial
and in-service training needs of staff in the offender learning
and skills sector. The radical workforce reforms set out in "Equipping
our Teachers for the Future" will take effect from September
2007 and will pave the way towards all teachers in offender learning
settings being qualified and having a licence to practise.
33. DfES instituted an initial Leadership
and Management Development Programme for Heads of Learning and
Skills (HOLS) in November 2005, and QIA has commissioned ALI to
undertake a review of leadership and management of offender learning
across all provision to inform quality improvement.
34. Other prison and probation staff clearly
also have an important role to play, and DfES is working with
Skills for Justice (the relevant Sector Skills Council) and other
key stakeholders to ensure training and development available
to them encourages commitment to the skills and employment agenda,
for example by extending the network of Union Learning representatives,
building on the work currently under way by the Prison Officers
Association.
F. Sentencing Policy
The Committee advocated greater use of open
prisons to help short-term prisoners maintain existing jobs and
education. (Committee recommendations 43 and 51)
35. Sentencing policy has been comprehensively
reformed by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The new sentencing
framework in the Criminal Justice Act expanded the range of sentencing
options available to the court, and guidelines on the new Act
were published in December 2004 to ensure effective targeting
of resources. The establishment of the National Offender Management
Service in 2004 underpins the successful implementation of these
new sentences in a way which promotes rehabilitation and prevents
re-offending.
36. The Government is committed to reducing
the number of ineffective short custodial prison sentences. An
intensive community sentence which addresses offending behaviour
and enables the individual to pay back to the community while
maintaining family and employment links can be the most cost-effective
option in preventing offending and cutting crime.
37. For those offences which are so serious
as to require custody, but where the individual circumstances
of the case allow the court to do so, the under 12-month custodial
sentence may be suspended (Suspended Sentence Order) and the same
range of requirements used as exist in the community sentence.
The sanction of prison remains throughout the period of suspension,
should they fail to comply, but the work undertaken in the community
can enable sustained progress to be made on skills learning and
improved employability.
38. Implementation of Custody Plus has been
delayed, but when the under 12-month sentence comes into force
for those offenders who commit offences sufficiently serious to
warrant an immediate short custodial sentence, it will ensure
that every released prisoner in this previously unsupervised cohort
has contact with an offender manager. The profile of many short
sentence prisoners is one of chaotic lifestyle and repeat offending,
often accompanied by problems such as substance misuse, low educational
attainment, basic skills needs, learning disabilities, relationship
and accommodation difficulties. Their offending can be intractable
and they may serve repeated spells in prison (the so-called "revolving
door").
39. The offender manager will be able to
provide tailored support to tackle offenders' multiple problems
and help them into education, training or employment. Ideally
the licence will build on work begun in custody as part of the
prison Induction Assessment process, though, in many cases, under
12-month prisoners will be in prison for too short a time to enable
them to begin, let alone complete, a course. Nevertheless, the
aim is for education and training begun in prison to be part of
a seamless delivery that can be completed in the community on
licence and the use of mentoring and voluntary sector provision
is likely to play an important delivery role here.
40. Many short sentence prisoners are likely
to serve their custodial sentence in local prisons, which are
able to manage the rapid turnaround times associated with short
prison sentences. Also, while the Prison Service is anxious to
maximise the use of open prisons, this has to be within the wider
context of public protection and safety and it would not be appropriate
to allocate greater numbers of short-term prisoners to them automatically.
Allocation to open prison conditions is dependent on a stringent
risk assessment: in some cases this occurs shortly after sentence,
but many prisoners will reach open conditions relatively late
in their sentence, having only at this point successfully demonstrated
a reduction of risk.
G. Prison Regime and Facilities
Internet access for prisoners was considered
a priority among wider needs for capital investment in education
facilities. The Committee advocated making prison work conditions
more realistic, and revisited the barriers to education resulting
from the custodial setting. (Committee recommendations 17, 35,
44, 47, 50, 52 and 55)
41. The Green Paper set out proposals for
a new emphasis on skills and jobs in the prison and probation
services, which have been broadly welcomed. We intend to publish
further detail shortly of the ways in which this will be taken
forward.
42. Additional capital resources for offender
learning are assessed against competing demands on finite public
resources. Where prisons and employers work closely together there
may be instances where the latter would recognise the need for
an investment from them in capital facilities necessary to deliver
the appropriately trained workforce of the future they need.
43. We recognise the great potential of
internet access, and NOMS is trialling an Offender Resettlement
and Learning (ORAL) infrastructure in all London Area prisons,
exploring delivery of a wide range of services such as secure
web access, controlled e-mail facility, in-cell education and
resettlement information services.
44. While the Prison Service finds it difficult
to compete for contracts which create a fully realistic experience
of work there are examples of this, such as HMP Coldingley which
works with the Howard League to train prisoners in desk-top publishing
to deliver external contracts, with offenders receiving at least
the minimum wage and paying tax, national insurance and pension
contributions.
45. There are always practical constraints
on the provision of education in secure establishments, but NOMS
is committed to working with providers and the LSC to ensure that
these are kept to a minimum. The Government acknowledges the particular
issues arising from overcrowding and churn, and these will be
addressed in the context of NOMS' work to rebalance sentencing,
stabilise the prison population and modernise the estate.
46. The Government's original response to
the Committee set out steps taken to address the problems of prisoner
movement. Though these require a long-term solution, more immediately
the situation can be ameliorated through action to make offenders'
learning records quickly and easily available to the receiving
prison or probation area, through use of ILPs, by the increasing
availability of evening and weekend classes and by the introduction
of more modular learning systems.
47. The record of increasing investment
and achievement in prisons provides a strong platform for further
development. Through NOMS, a new way of working with offenders
systematically throughout their sentence, both in custody and
the community, will be introduced, with sentence plans based on
consistent identification of need and risk, and resources targeted
at reducing the risk of re-offending by providing the right interventions
in a planned system. The new arrangements for an integrated learning
and skills service through the LSC go with the grain of NOMS'
overall management of offenders.
48. The Committee's original point that
these problems cannot be the concern of any single Department
was well made. The Government believes it is addressing that through
publication of the Green Paper and the follow-up work on the proposals
which have taken a cross-government approach involving DfES, Home
Office and the Department for Work and Pensions, supported by
the relevant delivery organisations—the LSC, NOMS and Jobcentre
Plus. This is an area of strong partnership working and we intend
shortly to set out plans to take forward—jointly—action
to develop a culture within prisons in which education and skills
are a priority. The Government is not complacent; nor does it
underestimate the scale of the task ahead. But all concerned are
determined to press forward with reform, and value the Committee's
continuing interest in this area of work.
December 2006
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