Dame Sally Coates 'Unlocking Potential' Report
The UK Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has released Dame Sally Coates’ report and recommendations following her review of the prison education system, entitled “Unlocking Potential: A Review of Education in Prison”.
Coates key message in the report is that prison education should be central to the prison and rehabilitation system, as not only can it change prisoner’s lives, it can also contribute to safer communities, through reduced reoffending rates, and financial savings - the current cost of reoffending is an estimated £9.5bn - £13bn per year.
According to the report, prisons, for the most part, no longer recognise the importance of prison education, and there is no system in place for different prisons and governors to learn from each other. …show more content…
The report urges prisons, education providers, health providers and probation services to work together to meet shared targets for the employment and reoffending outcomes of the prisoners they are responsible for. The report also recommends an improvement in employer engagement to ensure that the vocational training and basic skills qualifications received in prison is reflective of the requirement of employers once the prisoners are released. In the cases when employment is unlikely, due to the nature of an offense or the number of years in a sentence, education should be utilised as a tool for settling the inmates into their …show more content…
Coates’ report put forward a number of key recommendations to achieve the goal of placing education at the center of the prison regime, maximising prisoner’s potential and reducing reoffending, including:
- All prisons should use educational performance measures, which should be monitored to drive continuous improvement. A baseline should be established to assess an individual’s academic performance and to test for LDD.
- A Personal Learning Plan should be developed for all prisoner’s to specify what educational activities are to be completed during their sentence, which should be in digital format to allow the transfer of data through the system if a prisoner transfers to another prison.
- Prisons should receive an overall performance measure from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, under which educational performance should receive a separate assessment from
Coates key message in the report is that prison education should be central to the prison and rehabilitation system, as not only can it change prisoner’s lives, it can also contribute to safer communities, through reduced reoffending rates, and financial savings - the current cost of reoffending is an estimated £9.5bn - £13bn per year.
According to the report, prisons, for the most part, no longer recognise the importance of prison education, and there is no system in place for different prisons and governors to learn from each other. …show more content…
The report urges prisons, education providers, health providers and probation services to work together to meet shared targets for the employment and reoffending outcomes of the prisoners they are responsible for. The report also recommends an improvement in employer engagement to ensure that the vocational training and basic skills qualifications received in prison is reflective of the requirement of employers once the prisoners are released. In the cases when employment is unlikely, due to the nature of an offense or the number of years in a sentence, education should be utilised as a tool for settling the inmates into their …show more content…
Coates’ report put forward a number of key recommendations to achieve the goal of placing education at the center of the prison regime, maximising prisoner’s potential and reducing reoffending, including:
- All prisons should use educational performance measures, which should be monitored to drive continuous improvement. A baseline should be established to assess an individual’s academic performance and to test for LDD.
- A Personal Learning Plan should be developed for all prisoner’s to specify what educational activities are to be completed during their sentence, which should be in digital format to allow the transfer of data through the system if a prisoner transfers to another prison.
- Prisons should receive an overall performance measure from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, under which educational performance should receive a separate assessment from