Inspectors criticise the lack of reading education in prisons

Work with offenders on today’s joint report by Ofsted and the prison inspectorate.

Failing to teach prisoners to read is “huge missed opportunity” and leaves half unable to access vital rehabilitative education while in prison, according to new research published by Ofsted and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons today. Manifestly, those released who are still unable to read, will find it harder to make a successful return to society. 

The joint report highlights the barriers preventing prisoners from receiving the support they need to learn how to read or improve their reading skills. It finds the reading education on offer in many of the prisons visited by the inspectorates was minimal at best.

Regrettably, the inspectorates found that leaders’ focus was on enrolling prisoners on courses aimed at gaining qualifications, even though up to 50% of the prisoner population could not read well enough to take part. As a result, prisoners who need the most support with education are largely overlooked.

The report finds that, in most prisons, the curriculum is not focused on reading but on practising for exams. Prisoners are not encouraged to enjoy reading, to apply their reading skills across their life, or to read whole books. Many staff did not know how to teach reading. This lack of adequate reading education means that quality support has been left to voluntary organisations or enthusiastic staff members. Work with offenders has profiled the work of the leading charity in this area, the Shannon Trust here.

In addition, prisons do not have systems in place to identify prisoners’ reading needs or track their progress. In most of the prisons visited for the research, routine phonics screening assessments were not being used to identify the gaps in prisoners’ knowledge and skills, and information on prisoners’ learning was not routinely shared with other prisons.

Main findings

Inspectors concluded that reading education is not given sufficient priority within the prison regime, specifically:

• reading is not a distinct part of the core education offer
• leaders focused on qualifications that were not suitable for half of the prison population
• early reading provision in prisons relies heavily on voluntary organisations to deliver it
• assessments for identifying prisoners’ specific learning needs and gaps in reading knowledge were inappropriate
• leaders do not have effective systems to identify and address prisoners’ reading needs

The report also argues that much education provision is not organised in a way that supports prisoners to improve their reading:

• prisoners had as little as an hour a day out of their cells and few were let out to take part in education
• prisoners were often paid more to work than to attend classroom education
• libraries were rarely used to give prisoners opportunities to practise reading

Today’s report also notes the benefits of prison libraries and how they can encourage prisoners to read. Unfortunately, the use of libraries continues to be severely limited due to practical constraints, such as staff shortages and time clashes with prisoners’ working hours or other education sessions.

Conclusion

Perhaps the report’s most damning finding is that prisoners with the greatest need to improve their reading generally received the least support.

In light of the findings, Ofsted and HMI Prisons are calling for reading education to be offered as a distinct part of the prison education programme. They say that Governors should lead an approach to get prisoners reading for “pleasure, purpose and rehabilitation” but caution that this needs an ambitious strategy to improve prisoners’ reading skills, the use of prison libraries, and better systems to assess, monitor and share information on prisoners’ reading