Prisoners: Literacy
(asked on 16th May 2018) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the level of illiteracy among the prison population in England and Wales over the last three years; and how those figures have been affected by the literacy programme organised by HM Prison Service.
On 24 May, we published a ground-breaking Education and Employment strategy for our prisons. The strategy sets out how we will transform our approaches to helping prisoners develop their skills and thereby secure and sustain employment after they leave custody.
The government introduced mandatory testing of prisoners’ levels of maths and English in prisons in England in August 2014. Prisoners are tested on reception to custody and, since 1 August 2017, we also test prisoners when they move between establishments and on release.
The table below sets out data on assessed levels of English on reception for prisoners in custody in England.
Academic year: | 2014/15 | 2015/16 | 2016/17 | |||
| Number | % | Number | % | Number | % |
Education assessments in English | 72,680 |
| 62,230 |
| 54,170 |
|
of which … |
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Entry Level 1 | 5,760 | 7.9% | 4,620 | 7.4% | 4,350 | 8.0% |
Entry Level 2 | 9,630 | 13.2% | 9,770 | 15.7% | 8,440 | 15.6% |
Entry Level 3 | 21,620 | 29.7% | 21,050 | 33.8% | 16,610 | 30.7% |
Level 1 | 25,850 | 35.6% | 18,560 | 29.8% | 17,360 | 32.0% |
Level 2 | 9,340 | 12.9% | 6,340 | 10.2% | 5,830 | 10.8% |
Not known | 890 | 1.2% | 2,410 | 3.9% | 2,110 | 3.9% |
Entry Level 3 would be the level expected of an 11-year old: in the 2016/17 academic year, 54% of prisoners were at or below that level in English.
We are empowering governors, giving them the power to tailor education and training to the needs of their prisoners by putting in place new prison education contracts that will come into effect from April 2019. Under these new arrangements, we will be collecting the data needed to allow us to judge the success of our learning programmes more effectively in terms of progress. We have put in place a core common curriculum, focused on the underpinning basic skills of maths and English, which will underpin the new education contracts. We have selected the Awarding Organisations whose qualifications will be used exclusively in these subjects so that those starting a course at one prison can bank and build on their progress if they move elsewhere.