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

In one prison, staff and prisoners recognise and value the importance of key skills to employers, and learners work towards gaining relevant qualifications. The wider key skills support the achievement of individual learning goals and help with reintegration into the community upon release. Guidance notes and checklists are given to teachers to support them in cross-referencing key skills to vocational and academic programmes.

 

Jermaine is an inmate working on the demolition of road humps on the prison road. Jermaine says, ‘I am 30 years old and I have been here for three months. I came from another prison. I had an assessment. I done a test to show them what level I am in education.

‘Then, I done IT and basic computers at Level 1 and 2. Today I am working with construction operatives. I have learned about dumper trucks. I have taken three tests: road safety, working on dumper trucks and working on fork lifts. To do the questions you have to be able to read. I have done a maths test also.

‘When I leave prison I want to continue with my work. What I really want to do is computer repair. I will have to read good for that. I have got 13 months of my sentence left to do.’

 

Chris Fone is the Adult Education Co-ordinator at an open prison. Chris says, ‘My job is to assess young men for their basic skills needs and to build these needs into classroom work or integrate them as part of our outreach programme.

‘Here we support basic skills in the workplace as part of a work-placement arrangement prior to men leaving prison.

‘Every inmate that comes into the education department (and not all do) is screened. From there, we try to discuss and negotiate their needs. We do the BSA test to work out their level of skill. Then their needs will be incorporated into an education programme, where the inmate will have a diagnostic assessment.’

What does Chris’ work involve day-to-day? ‘I assess and diagnose their problems in a way that they want to come back into the education centre and begin to address those needs. These may be needs in the workplace. For example, it may be someone who needs to read an operating manual. He may not have reading skills sufficient to be able to do a particular job. Once the learning programme is in force, we review that within two or three weeks, and a new diagnostic test takes place. We then form a new learning plan from that new information.

‘Take Carl, for example. We received his transfer notes from his sending prison. These indicated that he was working towards Level 1. That gave me a good indication of the level he needed to work at. Carl was sent from an allocating prison where he would have gone straight from court when sentenced. He would then have been risk-assessed, and from this risk assessment it would have been decided which prison he should be sent to. If they are non-violent they have every chance of moving quickly through the system into an open condition.’

What is Carl doing now? ‘Carl is now in an open prison. In the last nine months of his time, he will go into a proper job. Even when they are working outside the prison, they can come into evening classes. So if they have problems in their jobs with literacy or numeracy, we can address these needs in the evenings,’ says Chris.

‘This prison is a working prison – every man has to have a job. So we have very few discipline staff in relation to the number of prisoners. A lot of the men need to be doing jobs like cleaning, keeping the prison maintained. Some work preparing food. We need to have inmates doing these jobs to make the prison work. So we use the opportunities about the prison to teach basic skills.’

What about the future? Chris adds, ‘Teaching basic skills will become even more relevant after April 2003 as we will be receiving life prisoners who will be coming to prepare to go outside after being inside a long time. They will need basic skills to write letters to get jobs and to be able to do jobs.’