Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)

PHIL HOPE MP, RT HON BARONESS SCOTLAND OF ASTHAL QC, MR CHRIS BARNHAM AND MRS FRANCES FLAXINGTON

18 DECEMBER 2006

  Q60  Helen Jones: I understand that, but it is not much use making the link with the local employer if that offender is then moved round the prison system, not because of any reassessment of the risk they pose, but simply because of the sheer numbers we are dealing with, and then they go to a different part of the country and that link is broken. That does not help prevent people reoffending in future, does it?

  Mrs Flaxington: The concept behind offender management is that that offender manager will actually track the offender wherever they are, that we actually have a continuity of information, of assessment, passing it through the system, whether the offender is in prison or in the community.

  Q61  Helen Jones: I understand that, but that is not my point. You can track them, but if you have broken the link with the employer, you have broken the very link that might prevent them reoffending in the future, have you not? What is the point of someone going through skills training, making links with a local employer and then being moved round away from that? It is great tracking them, we know what is happening to them, but you are still not increasing their chances of getting a job when they come out, are you?

  Mrs Flaxington: I think by having this regional offender management system, by having these regional partnership boards, by having this assessment of skills gaps across the country, by having this network of employers across the country, we will be able to match people wherever they are in the country because we are going to have a much better picture of what is actually happening.

  Q62  Helen Jones: You will not, because the skills needs in different parts of the country are very different. If you start a programme for someone which is matched to the needs of a local employer, you might very well find that in another part of the country the skills they have gained are not necessarily in short supply, there is not an opening for them.

  Baroness Scotland of Asthal: Can I say that the impression that we have got from a number of employers is that there are what are called "soft skills", but they are actually quite hard skills, which we need in terms of punctuality, working with others, being able to have literacy and numeracy skills and pick them up. Lots of employers say, "We can give the specialist training, but we actually need those core skills to be developed better with the staff with whom we work." So that is issue number one. So there are certain core skills which you can give to offenders which will enable them to be more employable than they would otherwise be, but the most important thing, I think, that we need to grapple with is the idea that the moment the person comes into the criminal justice system that needs-based assessment and that risk-assessment has to be made at that point, because offender management is not simply about what happens to them when they go in prison, there is an issue about whether they should go to prison at all. If you look at the 2003 criteria for sentencing, it is not just about punishment, it is about the sort of intervention or sentence which will reduce the likelihood of reoffending and rehabilitate the offender as well. So it is punishment and those other issues. What we want the offender manager to do is to make that risk and needs-based assessment when the decision is made before the court about disposal and for us to be able to retain those who are not dangerous and who are not serious in the community so some of these issues will be more easily and more effectively dealt with because they will remain in situ. We then, because we are going to have an offender manager who will stay with the offender through the process, have an expectation (and I am not talking about aspiration but an expectation) that each offender when sentenced will have an offending plan. So the court will be told, "The reasons that we say that you should not go to prison are as follows. Whilst in prison we would expect the following to be undertaken with this person", so that they have a sentencing plan and the sentencing plan would be worked on more concretely in prison so that when they come out they have got a discharge plan and you have that continuity from the beginning to the end. That is end-to-end offender management.

  Q63  Chairman: Wonderful in theory, Lady Scotland. Can we move on?

  Baroness Scotland of Asthal: It is delivering it in practice which is very difficult. In relation to the issues that Fiona raised in relation to women, I absolutely agree with her that there is a model in terms of the work we are doing for women, the reducing re-offending programme, which was just over the nine million that we are trying to deliver through the Women into Work Programme, which deals specifically with the different models, and in relation to arts and the strategy Fiona is absolutely right about that too. If you look at the Civic Alliance, the Civic Alliance is about looking not just at accommodation but also arts, sport and the other activities which we can use creatively to access learning.

  Chairman: We are coming to alliances in a minute. We want to move on. Andrew.

  Q64  Mr Pelling: I am sorry to look backwards for a moment, but the experience with the OLASS when it came to the new contracting arrangements with the pilot areas, how were those pilots assessed and how did they feed into the rolling out of the programme nationally? How was this able to ensure that where we have had this roll-out there was what was actually a short period of time?

  Phil Hope: As we delivered the pilot in the three regions we wanted to assess as they were going along; so we were learning the lessons from how the pilots were going so that we could apply the lessons learnt to the roll out. We did not wait until those three regions had finished, researched it, found out what the truth was and then commissioned the roll-out for most of the six regions, we did the learning along the way so that we could then roll it out in that year as we wanted to. We are still carrying on doing those assessments and, as you can see from the report, from the early inspection, clearly it has made a huge difference, but there are still questions to be answered about the exact difference of the different models, the models in the south-west in particular compared to others, and the extent to which you commission prison education alongside, or differently from, education for offenders in the community, and the regional strategy that the south-west has adopted is different from others. I am not going to speak for too long, because I will get told off again, but it is that learning that we are taking on now as we go through, and, of course, in 2009 all the regions will be recommissioned again on a three-yearly cycle and we are hoping that the two regional test-beds that we are putting in place in 2007-08 will start further learning so that each of the OLASS contracts we have got can develop this campus model having learnt the lesson. So this is work in progress.

  Q65  Mr Pelling: I know the Government these days is about constant revolution, but you made reference to the change that is taking place. The Association of Colleges have expressed concerns about the resources that are required to rebid in a different style. How concerned should we be about this speed of change, and do you recognise that there is some instability that is created for colleges and, indeed, for the motivation of staff who are currently delivering these programmes?

  Phil Hope: To be honest, I realise the speed of change was fast, but I realise too that the level of change that was needed to get the improvement was dramatic. Without driving the agenda for it as hard as we did, we would not have achieved the kind of change we have done in such a short time. I know change is difficult, but through using that formative evaluation method, as opposed to the summative evaluation, we were able to learn the lessons as we progressed, and certainly, whilst we know change is always difficult for staff as they go through, the fact that the new providers and the new approach to doing this has achieved such a step-change in its performance does imply that it was the right thing to do, to drive hard.

  Q66  Mr Pelling: You are changing again. Why is it necessary to change again for 2009?

  Phil Hope: We are inviting two regions to bid to be test-bed regions for these new ideas. The campus ideas are rooted in the OLASS model; they are another step forward. So we are hoping the two regions who have been through the process already will say, "Yes, we want to carry on and change". I would not call it a permanent revolution, I would call it building on good practice and doing so in a systemic way.

  Q67  Chairman: It is all in the past though, is it not? The last time you did five regions, you hardly assessed them before you spread it to the rest of them.

  Phil Hope: I think, as I said, the assessment was going on as the pilots were rolling out, but I think that the change that has happened has been successful. I think there have been concerns about the impact on particular individual institutions. I think they have been managed quite carefully. At the beginning there was a key issue about communication. I think when you are managing a process of change communication is absolutely critical, and I think the Green Paper and now the Next Steps document makes it very clear what we are trying to achieve in communicating to staff in all parts of the system why we are doing what we are doing.

  Q68  Mr Pelling: In which way is this evolution rather than revolution? Would it not have been better have had two rounds of OLASS before moving on again?

  Phil Hope: As I say, I think it is evolution in the sense that we have taken the learning from three pilots and applied that to all nine regions. Those nine regions will be in place for three years delivering the new contracts that they have agreed, but, rather than just resting on those laurels, as it were, we have invited two of those regions to try out the next stage building on the OLASS model into the campus model so that by 2009, when we recommission them, we rebid, we will have new things to put into that bidding process to build on the success that the campus model will have shown us in the two test-bed regions.

  Mr Barnham: Could I add to that? There are always difficult judgments to make in these change processes about the balance between speed and going steadily. Your Committee itself did criticise the Government for their lack of urgency on this front when they identified a lot of issues that needed to be dealt with in prison education, so the OLASS change was intended to be fast, and I do not think we make any apologies for that. It was evaluated as we went; there was action research by independent people as we went along. There is a report that has been published one year on of the development regions which shows that the process overall has been a positive one. I think the thing to say about the campus model is that we have not said that the OLASS model is going to be thrown out and something completely different put in its place. People have said the contracting approach may be a bit too narrow. It is what we have got at the moment and it is having a positive impact, but maybe we can do better. So people have said, "Maybe you can do something slightly different, more connected with the mainstream." We may not need another bidding and procurement round in the same way in 2009 to replace those contracts. On the other hand, we may decide that we do have to. So the test-bed regions are to try things out to see if you can pull together the strands of the Green Paper strategy, to build on what OLASS has already given us, to do something a bit more effective and a bit more impactful. If that does not seem better than the OLASS process, then we would have to think very carefully about throwing that out and doing something different.

  Q69  Mr Pelling: It would be even more expensive for the colleges, would it not, if you went through that process?

  Mr Barnham: No, if we have another OLASS bidding round it will cost them possibly what it cost them this time round, although possibly less because they will be used to the process. If we develop the campus model sufficiently that we do not need a bidding process, so that we can build this into the mainstream planning and funding that the Learning and Skills Council does with its providers, then that would probably be less expensive for them.

  Q70  Mr Pelling: I have three more micro-questions, which I will try to deal with quickly. Quite often prisoners ask to be moved in the context of the educational provision that they might have been provided. Is there any way in which these new providers have been drawn into that, bearing in mind that some of them are quite new to the process, and how have they coped with that?

  Phil Hope: I am not aware that there has been any difficulty on prisoners requesting to be moved. The important thing is if an individual offender is having difficulty with their learning, to find out what that difficulty is, is it inappropriate assessment that has happened, is it that the nature of the provision is not to the quality that the prisoner was expecting?

  Q71  Mr Pelling: Sometimes it can used as an excuse to secure a move rather than real educational need. How is that being coped with?

  Phil Hope: We have not had any evidence that is causing difficulties within the system that I am aware of, but I am certainly happy to look at that and make sure that it is not happening.

  Q72  Mr Pelling: ESOL provision, that is made, is it, under this provision of OLASS? English as a second language.

  Phil Hope: It is something that we can be delivering inside prisons, yes.

  Q73  Mr Pelling: Is there much under this scheme—

  Phil Hope: Yes, there is.

  Q74  Mr Pelling: —bearing in mind you are cutting it elsewhere.

  Phil Hope: We are not cutting it elsewhere but there is provision for prisoners who need English as they are speaking another language in prisons.

  Q75  Mr Pelling: There was quite a change in the providers; I understand 78% was the change to the providers through the OLASS change. Do you think that has worked well? What regulations are in place to ensure that these providers are performing bearing in mind, at least initially, there was a lack of experience.

  Phil Hope: I think moving over to the LSC with the new contracting system, the fact that those new contracts are now in place and are delivering a change as we can see from the inspector's report, is clearly having a positive effect. There is a monitoring regime through the contract by the LSC of the providers to ensure that the quality continues to improve and at the end of the three year period a summative judgment can be made but in the meantime there are clear performance criteria that we expect the providers to be meeting. The LSC will be monitoring those and if they are not being met then they will be accountable through the contract of the LSC for not doing so.

  Q76  Chairman: Has my colleague Andrew Pelling really used the wrong kind of culture in terms of permanent revolution? Is it more Japanese shakubuku, breaking and subduing, that you are into? How do you explain all the nice things you have said about aspirations and so on, if you did a 360 evaluation of the people who deliver this stuff, what sort of response would you get? Frances, you have got a lot of experience in this and you mostly do very short answers.

  Mrs Flaxington: It is because I am passing all the notes.

  Q77  Chairman: The information that we are getting from prison governors is that they do not like it, they are unhappy and they are miserable. If what you say is true everyone should be dancing in the streets, but the prison governors do not like what is going on, certainly the Probation Service do not like what is going on. Who does like it? Frances, why are they not dancing in the streets? You know this area so well.

  Mrs Flaxington: First of all, I have to say this is wholesale culture change to introduce offender management—

  Q78  Chairman: I told you shakubuku, breaking it in two and then rebuilding a good society.

  Mrs Flaxington: I would also point to the roll-out of offender management which was based on a pathfinder in the North West and if you talk to the people on the ground doing the work, they are very, very positive. You talk to the offenders and they say, "For the first time I know what the plan is in plain speaking language and I know how all these people are trying to work together to help me". There are platitudes about the difference.

  Q79  Chairman: I think you are from Yorkshire, are you?

  Mrs Flaxington: Leeds.


 
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