Source · Select Committees · Education Committee
Recommendation 8
8
Accepted
Paragraph: 44
There needs to be a whole prison approach to prisoners with learning difficulties.
Recommendation
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.
Government Response Summary
The government states that new or amended legislation is not necessary and that data sharing is already permitted; they will invest in the digital and data platform needed to develop personal learning plans and existing data sharing powers are available.
Paragraph Reference:
44
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
We accept this recommendation in the context of sharing information across HMPPS. New or amended legislation is not necessary to allow data from the DfE national pupil database to be shared with prisons. We have committed in our Prisons Strategy White Paper to invest in the digital and data platform needed to develop personal learning plans for prisoners, which will record clear career goals and the progress we expect prisoners to make towards them throughout their sentences—focusing on numeracy, literacy and qualifications that will improve their job prospects. Digital personal learning plans, which have been launched in four pilot sites, will create a data-informed path through education and employment services in prisons to make sure prisoners are making the best use of their time in custody. These will include details of a prisoner’s goals (personal, employment, education); activity history (education and work within prison); attendance at classes; assessments; additional learning needs; and course history. As of May 2022, the plans now contain information on additional learning needs. Further roll out of digital learning plans is planned to align with recruitment of support managers for prisoners with additional learning needs. New, or amended, legislation is not necessary to allow data from the DfE national pupil database to be shared with prisons. Prisons are already able to access an individual’s personal learning record (PLR) via the Learning Records Service (LRS). A PLR is an online record of qualifications and achievements for learners aged 14 and above and includes information from the national pupil database, individualised learner record and awarding organisations. The learning providers able to access the LRS include offender learning providers (or prisons). In addition, existing legislation governing the sharing of data from the national pupil database (namely the Education (Individual Pupil Information) (Prescribed Persons) (England) Regulations) includes regulation 3(6)(e) permits the sharing of data with learning providers registered with the UK Register of Learning Providers. This includes HMPPS, who are registered with the UK Register of Learning Providers, as a prescribed person with which DfE are permitted to share national pupil database data. Government Response: Not just another brick in the wall: why prisoners need an education 5 to climb the ladder of opportunity Further data sharing powers are also available to DfE and MoJ via the 2017 Digital Economy Act with part 5 chapter 1, permitting the sharing of data between specified persons to improve public service delivery. Both DfE and MoJ are specified persons covered by this legislation as are persons providing services to those authorities. In light of the above, legislation should not be considered a blocker to prisons accessing previous educational records for prisoners as this is already permitted and mechanisms, such as the Learning Records Service, are available to provide that access to prisons. In addition, there are proposals within the SEND and Alternative Provision Green Paper, published 29 March, considering the standardisation and digitisation of EHCP (Education Health Care Plan) processes. These proposals are currently open for public consultation, which is due to close on 22 July. We will consider these recommendations further once we have analysed and taken account of the consultation feedback.