What do cuts to prison education provision mean?

In recent weeks governors and heads of education from English prisons have been contacting me in despair about the level of cuts to provision they are facing under new prison education contracts. Although the prison service has told us that there will be an average reduction of just under 25%, some prison leaders have said they are losing as much of 60% of their education provision. Education providers are looking at making teachers and instructors redundant and there will be a big cut in the number of courses available.

Since its founding in 1982, the Inspectorate has been highly critical of the lack of purposeful activity in prisons. In the introduction to the first annual report, the Chief Inspector, James Hennessey wrote:

“We believe there are powerful reasons why the Prison Department must ensure that an inmate does not spend day after day in blank inactivity; he should be kept occupied for a normal working day at work, education, or some other constructive activity.”

Those “powerful reasons” to get prisoners into education still remain. The latest available data show that 28% reoffended in the year after release[1] (although delays in the court system mean this is unlikely to reflect the true figure) and MoJ statistics suggest as few as 31%[2] are employed six months after they get out. It is clear that many ex-prisoners leave jail and quickly return to committing more crime, creating financial and societal costs to their communities.

In the last two years we have had a critical population crisis in our jails, with more people coming in than the system is able to accommodate. This has led to successive governments being forced to introduce measures to release prisoners early. The Sentencing Bill that has recently been presented to parliament, will mean most prisoners serve just a third of their sentence in jail.

Depressingly in all my conversations with leaders in the prison service, no one has mentioned reducing reoffending as a way of shrinking the prison population. While there have been desperate attempts to squeeze in a few more spaces here and there, and a fortune spent on building new jails, there has been little focus on how prisons themselves can be more effective. A reduction of just a few percentage points in the reoffending rate would make a significant difference to the size of the prison population and cut some of the misery caused by prolific offenders in the community.

When we inspect a jail we give it a score for each of our four tests: safety, respect, purposeful activity and preparation for release. Since the end of the pandemic, the ratings for purposeful activity have got even worse: of the 38 jails we inspected in the last reporting year, 28 were rated as poor or not sufficiently good. It is usually only in open prisons and those holding sex offenders that we see even reasonably good education and training provision.

At £54k a year to keep someone locked away[3], the public could reasonably expect that prisons will be helping to rehabilitate offenders, but in reality much of the provision we and our colleagues at Ofsted inspect is awful. There frequently are not enough spaces for the population and it takes weeks to get prisoners into work or training. Attendance can be shockingly low, as making sure prisoners are in classes and workshops does not appear to be a priority in many jails and far too many refuse to attend, often because they are under the influence of drugs.

The working day in prisons is laughably short, often as little as five hours. Prisoners are doing courses and jobs that are unlikely to help them find suitable work when they get out or give them the sorts of habits or skills they will need to remain employed.

Ministry of Justice figures show that 57% of adult prisoners have literacy levels below those expected of an 11-year-old, and our findings suggest that up to 50% of prisoners are functionally illiterate[4]. In our data, outcomes for prisoners with low literacy levels are consistently much lower than for their more literate peers. In 2022 we produced a report criticising the failure of prisons to teach prisoners to read, with the least able getting the least support. In recent months we have been reviewing progress and in some jails with committed leaders such as Hatfield, Rye Hill and Frankland, there is excellent practice, but in many it seems things have barely improved.  

One of the arguments officials have used for reducing education provision is because attendance is so bad and standards so low, most provision simply throws good money after bad. This reveals a desperate helplessness within the prison service that allows itself to shrug off responsibility for giving prisoners the crucial skills that will help them to get work and stay crime-free on release.

With nothing meaningful to do all day many prisoners are bored, demotivated and helpless. “Serves them right, they shouldn’t have done the crime”, people might say. But the reality is that increasing numbers of prisoners are turning to drugs to get them through their time with many developing a problem while inside. In some prisons random tests show that more than 50% have been taking drugs. This is a frightening statistic with the prospect that many will come out of prison more likely to commit crime than when they went in.

The public should expect, given the huge cost, that jails are productive places where prisoners acquire the skills and habits that will allow them get work, pay their taxes and look after their families when they are released. That means they need to be taught to read, write and do maths to a reasonable standard so they can cope in a world where literacy and numeracy are more important than ever. If not, the cycle of crime and prison will continue at enormous cost to prisoners, their families and their future victims.

[1] Proven reoffending statistics: July to September 2023 – GOV.UK

[2] Offender Employment Outcomes – Statistical Summary – GOV.UK

[3] Prison performance data 2023 to 2024 – GOV.UK

[4] Prison education: a review of reading education in prisons – GOV.UK