Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent steps his Department has taken to improve the (a) literacy and (b) numeracy of people in prison.

The Prisons Strategy White Paper sets out the government’s ambition to equip all prisoners with the literacy and numeracy skills they need to get jobs on release. To support this, HMPPS has introduced new performance measures for English and maths, and we are holding Governors and providers to account for progress.

The delivery of face-to-face education was constrained by the pandemic but the numbers of enrolments on literacy and numeracy courses are now back up to, and in some cases exceeding pre-pandemic levels.

The joint report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons and Ofsted on Prison education: a review of reading education in prisons highlighted the need to improve literacy education in prisons. To address its recommendations, we are reviewing the current mechanisms for assessing and recording the levels of prisoners’ reading, improving the curriculum guidance given to governors to ensure they prioritise the teaching of reading, and reviewing teacher capability to ensure that all providers have staff who are properly qualified to teach reading.

To improve support for prisoners with additional learning needs we have started to recruit new support managers for prisoners with conditions such as learning disabilities, autism, acquired brain injury or ADHD

We are also planning to develop a Literacy Innovation Scheme to encourage new providers to work with us to trial new approaches to teaching reading with the aim of driving up quality and improving outcomes across the estate.