Prison Education – Remember Einstein!

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Albert Einstein famously stated: “the definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting different results”

Purple Compass welcomes the recent Prison Reforms that highlight the importance of Prison Education and the even more recent Coates review of Prison Education; which is refreshingly open, honest and to the point. However are we in danger of falling foul of perhaps Einstein’s most famous quote? Are we simply about to do the same thing and expect different results?

The Managing Director of Purple Compass and author of this article believes we may well be about to stumble headlong into the classic ‘Einstein’ quote. Having managed prison education in over 30 prisons, and visited probably close to 50 of them he has seen first hand what works, what doesn’t, and what small changes could be made in order to produce different and better results.

We recognise at Purple Compass that most people don’t like change, it scares them, it appears complex and it is feels easier to simply manage the status-quo. The daring sometimes make a few ‘tweaks’ or even introduce ‘radical’ black box models (that end up being so regulated and over-managed that they look remarkable similar to the original ‘boxes’!).   But as Einstein implied, if we want different results we must do things differently, so here are 3 ideas that Purple Compass believe will make a real difference:

1. Pay Parity – how will you ever attract offenders into education departments in any large numbers when they can earn more by packing ‘widgets into boxes’? If you value education below prison industries you don’t properly value education.

1. Bring Industries and Education back together – for start lets change the language to Work and Skills, or something more appropriate. Industry is old fashioned and infers that the UK economy is still about proudly ‘making widgets’; it isn’t. We are predominantly a Service led economy (although maybe prisoners can help on-shore work?) so lets start to talk about ‘Work’. Education is what the majority of offenders hated or could not cope with at school, they need Skills to provide them work, not certificates to make the SFA or Colleges meet their annual targets! So lets talk about proving skills that work and lead to work. But back to the point.

Now lets remember why these two aspects, Work and Skills, of prison life separated – politics and unions. When OLASS (1) was introduced prison governors were having their budgets for learning and skills (hang-on are we about to do a U-turn?) taken away from them and put into a national pot controlled by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA). They were worried that the small amounts of profit driven from prison industries would also go so they made a case to keep them ‘in-house’ - they won. The Unions could not bear to see their professionally trained staff enter the “dark” world of private-for-profit companies and as most prison industry managers at the time were prison officers, they argued for it to be kept ‘in-house’ – they won. Offenders were thus provided with two separate services, run by separate people and governed by separate targets – they lost.

If you want the world of Work and Skills to come together why don’t we just bring them together? Separating them hasn’t worked. Now the quick thinking readers will say here, “ah but they didn’t work when they were together either”? Whilst this may be true we believe at Purple Compass that the environment has now changed and the rehabilitation focus provides the necessary ‘glue’ to bring these effectively back together.

It is not fashionable but also lets not lose the thinking and momentum that started under the Working Prisons initiative. We are not interested at Purple Compass in political point scoring, or whether it was ‘our/your idea’; put simply work works. Employers will work in prisons if you make it simple, 40 hours a week is possible (nobody in the real world has a 2 hour lunch break anyway!) and most importantly almost every offender we have ever spoken to has preferred working in a good prison industry/work placement rather than languishing all day in their cell.

1. Change the ‘rules and regulations’ – we were tempted to say SFA rather than rules and regulations, but that is perhaps unfair as under their watch we feel that Prison Education has improved, just not by as much as it could, or should have. If you apply a prison education rule-book written for education in the community, not for behind the prison walls then you have rules and regulations that are simply not fit for purpose. An example being the great work of an organisation like St Giles Trust. Their Peer mentor scheme is hugely effective at helping prisoners in almost every area of a prison. But will the current rules allow a Peer Mentoring Level 3 qualification to be fully funded – No. Can you easily employ an ex-offender as part of your teaching staff – No. The list would go on but you get the point. Expecting a rehabilitation or prison education revolution when it continues to be governed by the wrong rule-book is not going to happen – remember Einstein!

So let’s remember Einstein, let’s make some changes and get some different results.

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