House of Commons - Public Accounts - Forty-Seventh Report

Select Committee on Public Accounts Forty-Seventh Report

1 Working to a common purpose

1. In 2003, Ministers decided that the Learning and Skills Council (the LSC) should take on responsibility for the planning and funding of a new learning and skills service for offenders in custody and serving community sentences. Many offenders have severe learning deficits: half of those in custody have no qualifications and almost 40% have a reading age beneath that expected of a competent 11 year old. Giving offenders opportunities to improve their basic and vocational skills can enhance their prospects of getting a job, and is a major part of the Government's policy for reducing re-offending.[2]

2. Prior to the implementation of the new service, learning and skills for offenders in custody were delivered by providers under contract to HM Prison Service, and by Instructional Officers employed directly by HM Prison Service. Since April 2004, planning and funding basic skills provision for offenders under supervision in the community has been the responsibility of the Learning and Skills Council. The LSC was expected to draw on its experience in commissioning mainstream further education to raise the quality of learning and skills provision available to offenders. Creation of a single, integrated service for offenders in custody and the community was expected to reduce disruption of learning caused by offenders' movements around the criminal justice system. After a pilot in three regions, the LSC rolled out the new Offenders' Learning and Skills Service (OLASS) across England in August 2006. Spending on OLASS in the first full year of operation, the 2006-07 academic year,[3] was £109 million.[4]

3. Although the LSC has responsibility for planning and funding the new Service, delivering learning and skills to offenders relies on partnership working between several organisations. The Prison Service's role is to encourage and motivate offenders to take advantage of the learning opportunities presented to them, and to make sure that learning and skills provision fits in with other prison activities, such as offending behaviour programmes, prison work and family visits. For offenders serving community sentences and released from prison under supervision, the Probation Service is responsible for identifying deficiencies in offenders' skills and education, referring offenders to appropriate providers for further help, and encouraging and motivating them to participate. The LSC awards contracts for learning and skills provision to providers, which are mainly established further education colleges and private companies. The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills leads the Offender Skills and Employment Programme Board, which also involves the Ministry of Justice and the delivery organisations, and which co-ordinates policy for offenders' learning and skills across all the agencies.[5]

4. The overriding objective for OLASS is to equip offenders with skills for life and vocational training, so that they stand a better chance of getting a job, and are less likely to re-offend. In practice, however, the education provided under OLASS also helps to meet the Prison Service's objective of keeping prisoners occupied. Against the background of rising prison populations, providing prisoners with appropriate levels of purposeful activity makes an important contribution to the maintenance of safe and well ordered establishments. Whilst the two objectives are not inconsistent, there is no consensus about where scarce resources ought to be targeted, nationally and locally. Giving prisoners who have long sentences or are already well qualified access to learning and skills provision can help settle them, but may have very limited impact on eventual employment or re-offending outcomes. The delivery partners have been unable to reconcile these different objectives and reallocate funding to prison establishments so that it better meets current levels of need.[6]

5. The number of teaching hours allocated to individual prison establishments in 2006-07 ranged from 14 hours per person per year to 95 hours per person per year (Figure 1). This distribution reflects historical allocations and there is no discernable pattern to the spread of provision and, in particular, no relationship to need. The LSC preserved existing allocations when it took on responsibility for the Service in 2005. This was because it was anxious that changes would destabilise prison institutions by altering the amount of purposeful activity available to prisoners. In a small number of prisons, changes to the amount of OLASS provision will only be possible once alternative means for occupying prisoners have been put in place. Nevertheless, both the LSC and HM Prison Service are committed to working together to achieve a better match between offenders' and employers' needs, and the provision that is available. Existing contracts between the LSC and learning providers expire in July 2009, and the LSC's intention is that an orderly transition will begin when the new contracts start.[7] Figure 1: The number of annual teaching hours per prisoner allocated to providers for offender learning and skills at prisons in England and Wales for the 2006-07 academic year

Source: C&AG's report, Figure 6

6. In September 2007, the LSC set out proposals to allocate funding according to priority groups of learners (Figure 2). The LSC has defined those prisoners serving sentences under 12 months as a high priority group. The most recent data on re-offending outcomes show that actual rates of re-offending are improving for all groups of prisoners except those with sentences less than 12 months in length. Improvements to the outcomes for offenders with sentences under 12 months could have a significant impact on the overall rate and costs of re-offending, given that this group represents over 60% of the total prison population. The delivery partners accept that the programmes currently on offer may be of limited practical use to offenders serving sentences under 12 months. In practice, adult offenders serving sentences between 6 and 12 months will have served an average of 4 months, including remand time, and offenders on the shortest sentences will only be in custody for a matter of weeks. Nonetheless, the LSC's providers are working to understand what sort of learning and skills interventions could be delivered to make a difference to this group's employability and propensity to re-offend.[8]Figure 2: The priorities the Learning and Skills Council proposes to attach to different groups of learners

OFFENDER LEARNING CURRICULUM AREA	LEARNER TARGET gROUP	PURPOSE OF LEARNING AND SKILLS PROVISION	PRIORITY FOR LSC OLASS FUNDING
Skills for Employment offer	Offenders with sentences less than 12 months to serve	To provide a short intensive programme and direct offenders to provision on release, acknowledging the limits on provision for those in custody for short periods	High
Skills for Life offer	Offenders needing basic skills provision, who are ready to learn, who will require at least a year to make progress	To address needs of those with basic skills needs, working towards national qualifications following further assessments	High
First full level 2 offer	Offenders with at least two full years prior to release and preparing for resettlement	To provide further assessments of need and learning support requirements, and provide a full programme of learning and skills to NVQ Level 2	High
Young people	Young people in custody	To provide a full range of learning and skills	High
Learning for living and work: communication and personal skills	Offenders with learning difficulties and/or disabilities	To provide additional support to enable engagement with learning	Medium
Higher level and personal interest learning	Offenders wishing to progress beyond NVQ level 2	To provide higher level learning at A level or equivalent	Low

Source: C&AG's report, Figure 7

7. The absence of clearly articulated common priorities is compounded by disjointed performance targets. The existing targets do not focus delivery towards those offenders with the greatest learning and skills needs, and some performance measures may incentivise delivery partners to act in ways inconsistent with the overall policy aims of increasing employability and reducing re-offending. There is a particular risk that HM Prison Service's target to achieve at least 80% classroom occupancy encourages it to fill classes with offenders most likely to turn up, rather than with those who most need to acquire learning and skills.[9]

8. Learning providers have no specific contractual incentives to help meet the partners' joint underlying policy objectives. The LSC's contracts with the 21 learning and skills providers stipulate the number of hours to be delivered in each prison, but payments are made irrespective of offender take-up, attendance rates, and whether or not offenders progress, complete courses or achieve qualifications. The LSC acknowledges these weaknesses, but did not make fundamental changes to the design of contracts at the outset because it was unsure what changes could be made without destabilising prison regimes. The LSC now intends that the next contracting round in 2009 will reward providers partly on the basis of offenders' levels of engagement and achievement.[10]



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