This is a guest post by Jon Collins, Chief Executive of the Prisoners’ Education Trust.
Every year, the Ministry of Justice publishes statistics on the number of people in prison accessing education. These allow us to compare over time how many people are doing courses and how many are completing them. Or at least they did until last week, when the latest set of statistics, covering 2023-24, were published. A revised methodology means that they are no longer comparable with previous years. But has anything really changed?
Results for this year
So first of all, what can we say with confidence? People who arrive in prison complete an initial assessment before they participate in education. These tests, while imperfect, are the best measure we have of the literacy and numeracy levels of people entering the prison system. The results for 2023-24 are, as always, very concerning. Most people were at Entry Level 1 to Entry Level 3 (73% of Maths assessments and 71% of English assessments). Entry Level 3 is roughly the literacy and numeracy level you would expect of somebody leaving primary school.
Within this, 17% – nearly 8,000 people – were at or below Entry Level 1 for literacy, roughly equivalent to the levels we would expect of someone aged 5-7. The National Literacy Trust notes that adults below Entry Level 1 “may not be able to write short messages to family or read a road sign”. Or, in practice, engage with many elements of a prison regime.
When it comes to access to education, 49,965 people participated in a course in prison during 2023-24 and 45,289 made measurable progress. Within this, 21,781 people participated in at least one functional skills course, which cover literacy, numeracy, ICT and English for speakers of other languages. The majority made measurable progress, with 17,176 achieving a full or partial grade.
Compared to what?
These numbers are hard to interpret in isolation. Is this good or bad? Better or worse than we might expect? Helpfully, the Ministry of Justice has recalculated last year’s figures using the new methodology to give us a point of comparison.
They show that using the same revised methodology, the results of the initial assessments are similar to last year’s. In 2022-23, 72% of Maths assessments and 68% of English assessments were at Entry Level 1 to Entry Level 3, compared to 73% and 71% respectively this year.
What is not clear is why they are quite a bit different from the results for 2022-23 using the previous methodology, when the equivalent figures were 68% for Maths and 65% for English. This difference of five and six percentage points is not insignificant, but it is difficult to know what’s driving it.
The primary change in methodology seems to be the removal of private prisons, prisons in Wales and establishments from the youth estate. You can only assume, therefore, that people in those establishments had higher levels of literacy and numeracy, pushing the averages up.
Similarly, revised figures for participation in 2022-23 give us something to compare this year’s figures to. For all courses and for functional skills courses the numbers participating have increased marginally, by 7% and 5% respectively. With the prison system in its current state, any increase is welcome. Whatever the methodology, however, it seems unlikely that the number of people participating in educational courses has matched the levels of a decade or so ago, when more than 100,000 people participated in a course.
One area where there does seem to have been a positive change, however, is the proportion of people making measurable progress in their courses. There was a 21% increase in learners achieving a full or partial grade in functional skills between 2022-23 and 2023-24; for all courses there was an increase of 14%. Despite this, relatively few people reach Level 2 in English (1,976 people) and Maths (1,334 people), the highest level routinely available for people in prison (and equivalent to GCSE grades 9-4 or A*-C).
What about accredited programmes?
This publication also covers participation in accredited programmes, which are interventions that are designed based on the ‘what works’ literature and are intended to reduce reoffending. These numbers are not affected by the methodological changes wrestled with above, and are therefore more straightforward. To summarise, during 2023-24 the total number of accredited programmes started by people in prison was 5,383, an increase of 12% compared to the previous year. The number completed went from 4,135 in 2022-23 to 4,886 in 2023-24, an increase of 18%.
While this reflects an ongoing recovery from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is difficult to draw any conclusions since these statistics only cover HMPPS-commissioned accredited programmes, not programmes run by the NHS (which make up the majority). As a result, they only provide a partial picture of overall activity.
A new and better story?
So what conclusions – if any – can we draw from the education statistics?
Looking beyond the methodological changes, in many ways they tell a very familiar story. It’s unarguable that education should be a priority for prisons. Literacy and numeracy levels are far lower than they should be and are a barrier to successful engagement with the prison regime and, in due course, with the job market. Yet the number of people participating is still too low and recovery post-Covid has slowed.
With the new education contracts delayed until at least the latter half of next year, and much-needed additional funding yet to emerge, it is difficult to know what can change this narrative. At PET we have published 10 straightforward recommendations to improve prison education. Maybe they could be the start of a new and better story?
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here
