Prisons: Vocational Guidance

(asked on 8th March 2018) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the consistency of National Careers Service provision across the prison estate.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 16th March 2018

In 2016 a review of prison education by Dame Sally Coates commented on the overlap and duplication within current arrangements for support to prisoners. The Ministry of Justice and Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service considered an internal review of National Careers Service (NCS) in custody delivery, which included the views of Governors and learning and skills staff,and identified significant inconsistencies and variations in delivery between prisons making it difficult to be assured that a universal and equitable service was being provided across the estate. The key findings of the review indicated that the National Careers Service in Custody contract was not delivering universal coverage across the estate and there was little time and opportunity to make the contract more responsive if extended for the maximum period of six months.

The current contracts for NCS delivery in custody (which are owned by the Education and Skills Funding Agency) will end on 31st March 2018. The contract could have been extended for a further period of 6 months maximum but such an extension left little time or opportunity to make them more responsive to the needs of people in prison. It may also have led to a further decline in delivery and performance as the contracts wound down and NCS staff sought and secured alternative employment. To avoid this, and to maintain value for money, a decision was taken not to extend the contracts further. The ESFA, under the terms of their contract gave notice to their providers by the end of 2017. Governors were informed via an internal HMPPS communication during the week of 22 January 2018.

Parliamentary interest around this area has been received from Lord Beecham who asked an Urgent Question which was tabled in the Lords on 31 January (asking why the government had cancelled the contract of the National Careers Service) and Lord Bird who is also seeking a meeting with Lord Keen to discuss this issue.

From this autumn, governors will be able to commission Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) through a new Dynamic Purchasing System introduced as part of the education reform arrangements. This will enable governors to shape a coherent service, reflecting the particular needs of their establishment. Until then prison governors will continue to have access to a range of existing providers for IAG advice such as DWP Prison Job Coaches, education staff (under the Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service (OLASS) arrangements) and Community Rehabilitation Company staff. Also, in line with giving greater empowerment to prison governors, they may use their budgets to fill any priority gaps locally. Due to the range of available current (and future) delivery there is no requirement for governors to seek to employ NCS staff.

We will continue to work collaboratively with a range of partners to facilitate distance learning courses for prisoners. Opportunities for such study will still be available from the Open University (OU) and from the Prisoners Education Trust ‘Steps to Success Scheme’. Additional learner support is also available under the OLASS arrangements and from the Virtual Campus (VC) e-learning platform that includes a number of career planning tools and OU courses, enabling prisoners to receive a similar learning experience to that of their mainstream peers.

The information requested in relation to the number of FTE NCS staff working in prisons, NCS provider referrals of prisoners during 2017 and colleges and universities that NCS providers have referred prisoners to during 2017 is not collected by the Department.

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