Next Generation Prison Education
Reducing reoffending is a priority delivery area for Ministry of Justice. Ensuring prisoners are engaged in education and training whilst in prison and being supported to secure suitable jobs on release is a key component of achieving that.
Scope for improvements relate not simply to teaching quality as is often the focus but in terms of how offenders are supported by the wider education and training system throughout probation and prison. Applying thinking from outside the justice sector around considering these ‘learning pathways’, underpinned by a digital platform and overseen with local governance and industry insights, can deliver improved provision for offenders.
However, this will require significant change both within His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), supporting a major change programme with a significant technology component, affecting front-line delivery, and externally, with an innovative supplier base being engaged and ready to step in to different roles.
Link into Probation
Probation often marks both the start and end-point for offenders’ engagement with HMPPS. But in a world which is moving to lifelong learning, rather than in-prison education starting afresh every time and then ending ‘at the gate’, recognising that learning pathways need to be end-to-end – having a joined-up approach linking prison and probation education is vital. Enabling the continuation of learning into post-release probation through to certification or equivalent conclusion should be a core focus of staff supporting resettlement. While organisationally complex to achieve, the benefits of integrated provision could be significant.
Digital role in delivery
Alongside technology providing the platform, it must also be the delivery means for more learning, especially in-prison. Recognising regime constraints, there is limited ability to offer prisoners classroom or hands-on training to the level required. Content must be re-thought to enable in-cell digital learning to play a core role in all education and training provision. Utilising the platform to facilitate virtual peer learning groups (both synchronous and asynchronous) would be incorporated into curriculum development and delivery plans.
Localised governance and tailored industry focus
Prison governors and Regional Probation Directors should be encouraged to work together to identify local sector employment trends and the appropriate skills to be taught best suited to supporting offenders into suitable jobs, building on New Futures Network good practice. It may be that HMPPS identifies that a new body is best-placed to play a role working with industry and learning providers to commission this targeted work-related training in addition to core curriculum. This body could also take on responsibility for quality review, recognising the increased industry focus, while utilising Ofsted for assurance around core educational provision.
Supported by a digital platform
Underpinning those pathways and partnerships needs to be a platform where learning content, skills assessments and individual ‘skills passports’ tracking progress and certifications are housed, accessible from a range of device types and in all settings. To be designed with scalability in mind, it should enable the introduction of techniques to address reflecting different learning styles, from nudges and gamification principles through to enablement of assistive technologies. The platform could be the means of capturing and integrating new supply chain partners, recognising the maturation of the market over the past generations of contracts – further education colleges, multi-academy trusts and the wider voluntary sector market offerings have broadened over this time.
Delivery of the platform would need to recognise the need for scalability at the outset, with a confidence in volume requirements to generate the investment business case. Development could be separated into ‘core’ and ‘bespoke’ elements – for example offering regional or cohort modules to be bolted on as needs emerge, though with an individualised journey still offered within the platform.
Transformation journey – internal and external
Implementing recommendations above involves questioning the role of HMPPS, potentially setting up a new body for whom offender learning is the core delivery mission, while working to transform the system across prisons and probation. In parallel, there would be a significant shift required in the market to encourage a new suite of providers to step in where skillsets matched. This supply chain may include encouraging Academy chains to expand into this area, perhaps through senior Academy chain leaders initially being involved as part of new governance arrangements. Technology providers would be play a role at the heart of delivery providing the platform, working alongside learning and offender management specialists in developing a new operating model.
Along with internal HMPPS and supply chain transformation, this would be an opportunity for a ‘reset’ of cross-government working, ensuring that for example DWP were fully integrated into the end-to-end approach being developed, recognising hours spent in learning as part of claims and in seeking work.
This level of change would not be achieved quickly, but can be achieved. For the next generation of prison education, thinking around strategic change enabled by digital should start now.
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