Slow progress on reading education in prisons

Charlie Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, reflects on progress in reading education in prisons.

This article is taken from Charlie's foreword to a joint report with Ofsted , published today: The quality of reading education in prisons: one year on - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

It is now more than a year since?HMIP?and Ofsted published their joint report into the teaching of reading in prisons . This highlighted a widespread failure and lack of ambition in reducing the staggeringly high levels of illiteracy among prisoners. Illiteracy was interfering with their daily life in prison and affecting their ability to get work. Most importantly, it was limiting their chances of staying out of trouble when they came out.

During the thematic review, prisons were recovering from the pandemic lockdowns and continuing to operate very reduced regimes. Disappointingly, this remains the case in far too many prisons. Recent?HMIP?inspections have been highly critical of the amount of time prisoners are spending locked up and the lack of purposeful activity.

It is in this context that we are publishing this review of progress. It shows that things have not improved at anything like the rate that Ofsted and?HMIP?would have expected. Although prisons are now required to have a reading strategy, many we have seen have been generic and created by the education provider without enough input or commitment from prison leaders. We have less confidence that prisoners will make progress in these prisons, than in the rarer prisons where improving reading is being driven by the governor, in partnership with the education provider. Too few teachers in prisons have been trained in teaching prisoners to read using systematic synthetic phonics. In many places, there are not enough specialist staff. This means that teaching early reading is often left to third-sector organisations, such as the?Shannon Trust , whose mentors are dependent on prison staff getting prisoners unlocked.

Our report was not just about non-readers; it recommended that reading became an integral part of prison life, for pleasure as well as for practical reasons. In our follow-up work, we have seen some examples where this is taking place, often driven by librarians or other interested staff members. We have also seen some new heads of learning and skills begin to develop prison-wide reading, but progress remains slow.

Ofsted and?HMIP?will keep returning to this subject, because we know the absolute importance of reading. We expect to see greater commitment from education providers and prison leaders in a reorientation of prisons towards putting improving literacy at the heart of what they do.