Yet another damning report shows the depth of the crisis in prison education caused by ongoing underinvestment and a lack of appreciation for the value of the work prison educators do, UCU said today.
The new Ofsted report finds that prisons' progress on improving reading education has been too slow across the board.
Again and again, the report highlights the massive problems posed by staff shortages, which it says 'still limit the quality of reading education in most prisons.' In 15 of the prisons inspected by Ofsted, the report points out, 'a shortage of qualified English teachers made it difficult to provide reading lessons.'
UCU said these are disastrous policy failures, inextricable from the UK government's failure to grasp the opportunity for a joined-up education strategy focused on the transformative impact for both individuals and wider society of second and third chance learning opportunities.
