News

National guidelines needed for prisoners' education

1 min read Education Youth Justice
National guidelines need to be developed to tackle wild variations in the quality of prison education provision, according to two Ofsted reports released today.

The reports, Learning and skills for offenders serving short custodial sentences and Learning and skills for the longer serving offender, found that a lack of consistent education provision is limiting the amount that prisoners' can learn in custody.

The watchdog found that the "slow and inefficient" transfer of records between different prisons and probation services hampered prisoners' learning.

Short-term offenders had access to a better range of courses than long-term offenders, but a fifth of prisons still failed to offer learning programmes suited to offenders serving sentences of less than one year.

Ofsted is recommending that the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) develop a national strategy for learning and skills provision in prisons.

Register Now to Continue Reading

Thank you for visiting Children & Young People Now and making use of our archive of more than 60,000 expert features, topics hubs, case studies and policy updates. Why not register today and enjoy the following great benefits:

What's Included

  • Free access to 4 subscriber-only articles per month

  • Email newsletter providing advice and guidance across the sector

Register

Already have an account? Sign in here


More like this