1B: What is 'success' in learner achievement?

HMP and YOI New Hall works with members of the YMCA team who work on a wing with young women on detention and training orders (DTOs). Any young people who are unable to attend education, for whatever reason, would be contacted by the YMCA team and encouraged to work towards a Youth Achievement Award. They can study any subject that interests them and which includes basic and key skills requirements.

Kirstie was a young person who was visited on the wing through outreach as she frequently refused to speak and often destroyed any work she did complete before it could be assessed. In the final weeks of her sentence, outreach workers were successful in getting Kirstie to attend education on a number of occasions. Her attendance had a positive effect on her ability to integrate and work with other young people.

Natasha was also placed on New Hall's Learning Support Unit register, and was supported through the final six weeks of her recall. Natasha excelled at both poetry and drama and was presented with a 'Girls on Top' certificate in acknowledgement of publication of her poem, 'To Hell and Back'. This poem was part of a collection of work published by the BBC in a book called 'Taking Care'.

Paul Costello is a vocational trainer for Industrial Cleaning.

He says, 'One of the things we do for literacy is we put together a portfolio. One of the things they have to do is consider a letter of complaint where the governor is not happy with the quality of our work. We have to work out how to deal with him, how we will reply to his letter and what we need to do to put things right.

'We incorporate numeracy into a programme about starting a business. The young people learn how to cost a cleaning contract and how to quote for a contract.

'To make sure they know they have got the costs right, they need to be able to measure the cleaning chemicals and to work out how much these will cost. They need to be able to do simple ratios, e.g. measures of 1 [in] 10, and they have to be able to read the dosage on the back of the chemical container.

'They also need to work out soilage rates, because all these amounts will affect the overall costing of the contract.

 

'We are doing work like this as part of a programme of embedding skills in vocational training.

'We know that what I'm doing with my students could apply in lots of other areas as well.'