Bare necessities

The Government wants to improve education in prisons but is in danger of failing to reach its target because of a shortage of skilled teachers. Caroline Haydon reports

A shortage of fully qualified basic skills teachers is hampering a government push to improve prisoners' education. Although an extra £20m is to be spent over the next two years to boost the prison education service, further education colleges now looking for staff to fill permanent jobs in prisons or young offender institutions are finding it difficult to recruit properly qualified teachers. And that in turn may affect Government targets for the improvement of education standards in prisons.

The problem is now a major issue, says Chris Swan, the education contract manager for Amersham and Wycombe College in Buckinghamshire, which holds the contracts to provide staff in prisons in the county and in Kent and London. While the Government is expressing a determination to help people achieve the qualifications that will get them a job and help them out of cycles of reoffending, the staff have to be found to fill prison jobs. "It's a continual problem," he says. "We try and recruit from sessional staff to cover. It is difficult getting permanent placements."

At Matthew Boulton College in Birmingham, Stephen Porter the assistant principal, has a similar story: "There is a lot of competition for staff with basic skills and IT experience," he says. "Prisons can lose out. There is a particular difficulty with numeracy." The college has contracts for 10 prisons in the East Midlands. The situation "has deteriorated" over the last four to five years, and finding good prison education staff is difficult, he says. Figures show that education can reduce reoffending rates by prisoners. More than half of all prisoners are reconvicted within two years, but good education and training in prison can help ex-offenders find and hold down a job on their release. The scale of the problem is clear. Half of all male adult prisoners and more than two-thirds of all adult female prisoners have no qualifications at all. All prisoners are already offered a basic skills screening test when they enter an institution, and the Government has begun basic skills "pathfinder" projects in seven prisons to pilot new national tests and standards aimed at improving initial assessment. Targets are tough. This year the target for the number of prisoners reaching level 2 (equivalent to GCSE standard) is 10,800 prisoners. Next year it is 12,900.

However, in Rochester Young Offenders Institute, Mary Sharpe the education director, has been trying to recruit a suitably qualified co-ordinator for more than a year. Working with Amersham and Wycombe College, she has advertised the position three times. Staff have come forward, but she says they have not been sufficiently experienced. "I can't just take anyone – this has to be a person who can switch these boys on and keep them switched on," she says. "I have one full-time basic skills teacher and I cannot get another who is qualified and keen to work in a young offenders institution."

Forty per cent of the 18-to 21-year-olds at Rochester are functionally illiterate. Those who end up at young offender institutions are very often children who made it through primary school but dropped out at 14, finding secondary school too big or too tough. Staff teaching them now are, therefore, dealing with those who have deliberately opted out of the education system and who are tough to teach. Some who apply are frightened by the prison environment, and that is understandable, says Mary Sharpe. "Some of these kids have had a hard time, their vocabulary is limited, their social skills are limited . No one has ever said 'no' to them. That can be difficult to work with. On the other hand I have worked in schools where I have been attacked, not by the kids, but by the parents. That would never happen here because we have prison officers, we have panic buttons, we have all the support structures."

Some staff offering to work at Rochester have been made redundant or have retired, she says. "They have been brilliant. I think one way forward is to show people who think they might work here what we are like.

"I am very happy to show staff what they might be letting themselves in for – to show them how the education department works, so people can see it is not so scary."

Twenty five further education colleges currently hold prison service education contracts, along with two local authorities and one private provider. But the system is under review as ministers have decided to tender new contracts coming into effect from April next year. This is the third time the contracts have been put out to tender.

"The concern among prison education staff is that there might be more private providers at the end of this process," says Chris Swan. "For most staff prison education is a vocation. The concern is that conditions of service will change."