Select committee: Education Committee
Recommendation 8
First report - Not just another brick in the wall: why prisoners need an education to climb the ladder of opportunity
Published 18 May 2022
Paragraph 44
Addressed to Department for Education
Education Committee Prison Education All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
There needs to be a whole prison approach to prisoners with learning difficulties. This is currently hampered by the lack of information sharing between the community and the prison estate regarding prisoners’ educational attainment in the community, and any learning difficulties that were identified. This also continues during the prison sentence, with different departments holding their own information on prisoners. There must be greater integrated working between different providers in custody—between education, health and offender management. The Government must amend legislation to enable data on prisoners to be shared so that prisons can access prisoners’ previous records of educational attainment from the National Pupil Database, and also to enable previous diagnosis on learning needs to be shared.
From: Education Committee, First report - Not just another brick in the wall: why prisoners need an education to climb the ladder of opportunity (HC 56), paragraph 44, 18 May 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 27 September 2022 (deadline 18 July 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government accepts many of the Committee's recommendations, some of them in principle, and rejects others, giving reasons such as existing governor flexibility, budgets being "subject to future Spending Review negotiations", and the cost of loans.
- On pay, it "reject[s]" equalising education and prison work pay, saying governors "already have the necessary freedom to set local pay rates" and that it does "not propose to set additional rules on pay".
- It rejects setting a date for broadband in all prisons: in-cell laptop services will be in 15 prisons by the end of October 2022, but wider rollout is "subject to continued and long-term resourcing".
- It accepts "in principle" the call for a review of the prison education framework by the end of 2022, but says "it would not be feasible to complete this within the timescales provided".
- It accepts the recommendation on employment hubs, committing that "By April 2023, all resettlement prisons will have an employment hub in place". It rejects removing the "six-year rule" for higher education loans.