When Will They Ever Learn?

I have been reading the latest report from the Chief Inspector of Prisons on Pentonville. I know that is bit of an indication of my sad life, but someone has to do it. I was particularly interested in the sections on the Education written by OFSTED. I am not sure they actually understand the purpose of education in prison for those who were totally failed by the school system, drift into crime, and end up in jail. I also read in other matters that there are questions as to whether they understand the purpose of education at all, but will leave that to one side.

When the Prime Minister stood up to make a major speech on education a few weeks ago, now long forgotten I guess, there were a lot of things he could have said. He could have talked about the large numbers of people failed by the school system, and how many are groomed into crime, so they end up in prison. He could have launched a major enquiry into the ways and means to stop this in future and repair the damage already done. He could even have committed to overhauling the system of teaching within the prison service. But he didn’t. He recycled an earlier speech on Maths being compulsory up to the age of 18.

Mr Sunak based his desire for advanced maths classes on the data that shows that Britain lags behind other leading nations in both Mathematical educational achievement and also economic performance. He suggests the two matters are linked. That I am afraid is nonsense. He is right to point out that a grasp of figures helps people budget, or understand decent deals on contracts for mobile phones or rents and mortgages. However this requires basic skills which the schools should be providing long before 18.

People who left school at an early age but with an understanding of arithmetic can when needed produce superb and accurate detail. When I was in pubs playing darts, others could always calculate the quickest way for me to reach 501 with trebles and ending with a double on the rare occasions I actually hit the board with anything, and faster than any calculator and certainly quicker than me. Also in the same pubs I would find those playing pool making complex assessments of angles to get out of snookers or to sink difficult pots. Carpenters can make the calculations they need, engineers the same, all based on their basic grasp of mathematical principals.

However a third of pupils leave school at 16 without even a GCSE in Maths, and simply forcing them to continue up to 18 will just cause resentment and resistance. Education should be inspiring and not a chore. There are also practical problems with this idea, perhaps the main one being that there is a drastic shortage of qualified Maths teachers and of course not only do the existing vacancies need filling but if this extension comes into place there will be a requirement for many more. And another dilemma which does strike me is that if there are all these 18 year olds leaving in his perfect future with what the Prime Minister considers to be essential skills for life, what happens to all the over 18s who left over previous years who do not have them or the under school 18s who’ve dropped out? Will they be cast on to the scrap heap?

Surely a rounded education is the aim, during which students are enthused to study and shown how to continue to learn when they leave. In my youth that meant a trip to the library, but now it can simply involve a smart phone and the knowledge of what information you need and from where it can be obtained. They should gain an enquiring mind and a desire to carry on gaining knowledge, whether at work or in their general lives.

I left school to work at 15 for family economic reasons and never stepped back into a classroom until I reached Pentonville some many years later, and my Maths is inadequate to calculate how many years that is. Well, my age embarrassment stops that anyway. Looking back at the actual skills I was taught, albeit many years ago, the most valuable were to be hungry to keep learning from life and from reading, and the ability to adapt. Technology is evolving day by day, and someone who has learned how to change and been give the desire so to do can thrive. Good employers provide quality training for their staff so they can take their basic knowledge and use it to advance their work. They should have got this ability and drive from their time in the classroom, but we know far too many have not because the system failed them.

What I like about prison educators is that they recognise that people in their classes have not failed but have been failed. They encourage them, and let them set their own personal challenges with tasks they want to, and do, achieve. The feeling of self-fulfilment is strong, and the classes become a vital part of their life. We have all met people who entered prison having been cast off as a failure and who have turned to crime but who leave with a qualification, a feeling of self-worth, and perhaps a desire to continue studying. With proper resources and support from the Prison Services from the top to officer level this could be increased.

That is where this OFSTED report goes wrong. It is mainly only interested in skills that can lead to work, and particularly in skills that can lead to work around the prison such as painting or carpentry. Of course this is important, but so restricting in terms of personal development and feelings of self-worth. There are 80,000 people in prison today, and they cannot all become bricklayers when they leave. Yet in Pentonville you have over 1000 men who did not learn about drama or current affairs but are given the chance to take part in improvised Shakespeare, to discuss philosophy and history, to write creatively and be able to express their views in debates. Art created there is astonishing, and the quality of writing in the Prison Magazine superb. The creative poetry is deep, moving, and sometimes very racy too. Self-expression from people who had been led to believe they had no skills at all.

Yet the Inspectors criticised failure to correct spelling. Of course correct spelling and grammar is important, but it is surely more important to gain the confidence to write down what you think and make others interested in that. They did not understand that at all. They should talk with those inside and perhaps meet the man who told me that being in the education classes was the first time in prison in his life he had been treated as an adult and because of that in future he would behave like an adult. Restricting that new confidence by focussing on spelling would strangle that feeling.

They made some valid points, about the need for continuity of education when moving from prison to prison, and when leaving. There were very valid complaints about how education was disrupted by failures to get people from cells to classes. But the key issue should be on learning to learn, and learning to love learning. After all, it is clear that if a prisoner can demonstrate to themselves how much they can learn in the worst possible place in the world, the noisy, intimidating depressing, setting of a prison, they would know they can continue down that route when they leave. They did not fail at school; they were failed by school.

I would hope that OFSTED will support the Commons Education Committee in demanding that the pay for attendance at Education classes has equal value with that for work within the prison, to encourage participation. Then go and talk to people going through the system with something other than a tick box check list. Appreciate how lives are being uplifted and changed.

#prison #education #ofsted