What do we know about prison education?

Work with offenders looks at today’s prison education statistics

The Ministry of Justice today published its official statistics bulletin on prison education for the year ending in March 2020, which means that the figures are almost entirely unaffected by the coronavirus-related lockdowns.

It goes without saying that prison education is an important part of any prison’s regime. Improving prisoner literacy and numeracy, providing vocational training, and other opportunities for personal development can give prisoners the knowledge and skills they need to get jobs on release and turn away from crime.

We know from the Justice Data Labs analysis of the work of the Prisoners Education Trust that prisoners who engage with prison education are less likely to reoffend.

These statistics are of more interest than usual because they are the first to reflect the new prison education system. In 2016, responsibility for the budget which was used to commission most prison education in England moved from the Department of Education to the Ministry of Justice and in 2019 new education contracts where established. This reformed system moved decision-making on prison education closer to prison governors, who would be free to commission the education needed via two complementary frameworks – the Prison Education Framework (PEF) and Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS). PEF provision includes a core curriculum of English, Maths, IT and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), whereas DPS provision is more niche and flexible, designed to allow governors to commission bespoke shorter-term provision, including careers guidance and sector-specific training such as roofing or rail construction based on identified job market needs.

Governors may use these complementary systems to make informed decisions on the education provided in their individual prison.

This report contains data from Year 1 of the new PEF contracts only.

It includes data on initial assessment of prisoners’ English and maths levels on arrival, numbers participating in education, and data on the level of achievement in English, maths, and vocational training courses. It’s important to remember that this data does not provide a full picture of prison education – delivery outside of the primary PEF contracts, including all DPS provision, is not captured in this report. The report also doesn’t cover prison education delivered in private prisons or Wales.

We share some of the key facts and figures from the report below. It may be helpful first to set out some of the key definitions of the different “Levels” of prison education. “Functional skills” are defined as the fundamental English, Maths and ICT skills that people need for their working and personal lives.

• 67,663 prisoners participated in courses.
• 59,891 prisoners participated in a course below level 2, 26,006 prisoners participated in a course of level 2 or higher. (Prisoners can take multiple courses).
• In total, 78% (53,111) of prisoners participating in courses achieved at least a partial grade / level.
• There were 55,099 Prisoners that completed an initial assessment
• Of the Prisoners, 53,101 took at least one Maths assessment and 53,247 took at least one English assessment.
• Prisoners took 57,284 Maths and 57,416 English initial assessments
• More than half of initial assessment results were at entry level 1 – 3 (below GCSE), with 61% of Maths and 57% of English.
• 30,168 prisoners participated in functional skills courses and 16,329 (54%) achieved at least a partial grade / level
• 17,680 prisoners participated in English functional skills courses and 51% (9,038) at least partially achieved a grade / level. 16,991 prisoners participated in Maths functional courses and 50% (8,431) achieved a grade / level.
• There were a small number of courses at level 4 or above (all courses above A-Levels) where 100% of participants achieved at least a partial grade or level. The lowest rate of achievement was for Functional skills courses in English, Maths and ICT at 54%.

Learing difficulties 

One of the most interesting facts to emerge from this bulletin is that more than one quarter (26% )of prisoners participating in courses had a learning difficulty / disability confirmed through a formal LDD assessment. Interestingly, the bulletin breaks down learning difficulties and disabilities by ethnic group and the highest rate of confirmed learning difficulties was among the white ethnic group (33% compared to 25% or lower for all other ethnic groups).