Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent estimate he has made of the proportion of the prison population who are illiterate; and what steps he is taking to tackle illiteracy in the prison population.

The Department for Education publishes data on English & maths screenings undertaken when someone is received into prison. English screening data provides information on the proportion of prisoners who have very low levels of literacy. The most recent data available, for 2017/2018, can be found via the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fe-data-library-education-and-training

For English, approximately 34% of prisoners were below the level expected of an 11-year-old. These prisoners would be regarded as having a high priority level of need.

We have recently overhauled the prison education system, giving Governors control over the education budget for their prison, and have implemented two new prison education frameworks: the Prison Education Framework (PEF) and the Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS). Governors have the freedom to commission bespoke English education for prisoners with low levels of literacy through the PEF, aimed at addressing their high priority needs. The impact would be improvement in, for example, prisoners’ reading and writing.