New prison education contracts – more of the same?

Funding challenges

The important thing query is whether or not these new contracts are sufficiently well-funded to allow the suppliers to develop a curriculum that can meet the wants of individuals in jail. There have been vital considerations concerning the stage of funding accessible for jail schooling for a number of years. For instance, the Schooling Choose Committee acknowledged in its 2022 report that “jail schooling is in a dangerous state because of a continuing decline in funding”. Of their proof to that inquiry, Novus acknowledged that “funding, and in flip assets accessible to ship schooling, should not sufficient to assist the complexity of want that’s introduced by the prisoner cohort”.

Worryingly, it doesn’t appear that the brand new contracts deal with this. Of their proof to the Schooling Choose Committee, submitted in 2021, the Ministry of Justice mentioned that the PEF contracts had a “complete annual worth of c.£125m”. Through the procurement course of, the preliminary annual worth of the brand new contracts for the 11 heaps was simply over £98m, a discount of greater than 20%.

These two figures should not wholly comparable. 5 prisons have been taken out of the procurement course of for the PES Various Commissioning Fashions challenge, an initiative to check new approaches and drive innovation that has disappointingly now been scrapped. Accountability for offering computer systems and a digital studying platform has moved from the schooling suppliers to HMPPS. And there have been different modifications to the jail property within the meantime. Furthermore, the printed contract values are greater at £102m yearly, excluding the West Midlands. It’s not clear, nevertheless, whether or not this consists of anticipated inflation over the contracts’ lifetime or different modifications.

However regardless of the actual figures – that are frustratingly troublesome to find out as a result of opacity of outsourcing processes – it appears clear that this isn’t going to be a lift to jail schooling funding. That is supported by what we’re listening to from a number of prisons, that are planning for cuts to their budgets from October. That is deeply regarding. Funding isn’t the one barrier to offering good high quality schooling in jail, however it’s actually one of the vital vital the reason why jail schooling is nowhere close to nearly as good accurately.

Making a distinction

There may be clearly a danger that with the prevailing suppliers once more sharing provision between them, an identical focus to the contracts and even much less cash accessible, what we’ll find yourself with is just extra of the identical or worse. This might be a missed alternative.

As a substitute, the Ministry of Justice should present extra funding to make sure that a broad and diversified curriculum is on the market to everybody. And the schooling suppliers and prisons should deal with this as a contemporary begin and work collectively to verify that there’s a actual give attention to enhancing the schooling and coaching accessible, so that folks in jail can use their time productively and acquire the abilities they should thrive on launch.

Because of Andy Aitchison for type permission to make use of the photographs on this put up. You may see Andy’s work right here