An HM Inspectorate of Prisons report on the teaching of reading in jails has highlighted emerging examples of excellent practice, with prisons putting literacy at the heart of their regimes.
But progress is now at risk due to national funding decisions.
Many people in prison struggle to read – almost two-thirds are at or below entry level 3 for literacy, compared to just 15 per cent of the general population.
A fifth, nearly 10,000 people last year, are at entry level 1, the lowest level.
The National Literacy Trust says adults below this level may not be able to read a road sign.
These people have been failed by mainstream education. Prison is an opportunity to put this right, and where prisons prioritise teaching people to read, it can be transformational.
Within prison, reading enables them to engage positively with the regime, participate in vocational training and keep in touch with their family.
On release, it is key to getting a job but also navigating day-to-day life, from accessing housing to being able to order from a menu.
As the HM Inspectorate of Prisons report shows, some prisons are seizing this opportunity. Due to a focus on reading by the inspectorate and by Ofsted, progress is being made.
But new contracts to deliver education in English prisons that began in October have cut education provision across the board, by as much as 65 per cent in some prisons. This has inevitably led to redundancies and reduces what is on offer to people in prison.
On top of this, prisons have a pot of money that they can spend on education to complement their core provision. One of the key ways this is spent is to provide literacy support and peer reading schemes.
Provided by charities such as the excellent Shannon Trust, this work frequently targets those who need the most support and may not yet be ready for classroom-based learning. But this budget has also been cut, from £14.1 million in 2022-23 to £12 million this year – a reduction of around 25 per cent in real terms.
This is madness. While prison education is still nowhere near good enough – it’s routinely the poorest performing sector that Ofsted inspects – it was slowly improving.
Last year, before the cuts, 10 per cent more people participated in education than in the previous year. Nearly a third of the prison education provision inspected in 2024-25 was rated as ‘good’, compared to 13 per cent in 2023-24.
There’s still a long way to go – 39 per cent was rated ‘inadequate’ and 31 per cent ‘requires improvement’, with no prison rated ‘outstanding’ since 2019 – but it is definitely progress.
We should be building on these positive signs with investment. Instead, courses and staff are cut, and programmes focusing on reading are being put at risk. And this will inevitably have the biggest impact on those who need additional support.
As the report found, specialist reading teachers in prisons “had either been cut recently or were under threat because of insufficient funding. This risked the progress of the prisoners most at need.”
For many neurodivergent learners and learners with learning difficulties, speech and language needs, or who had severely disrupted schooling, this kind of targeted and relational support is not optional. It is key to making engagement with education possible.
The need for a rethink becomes ever clearer. The government must find the money needed to reverse these cuts and ensure that people in prison can access good quality education that gives them the skills and qualifications that they need.
This will enable them to thrive on release, which reduces reoffending and ultimately saves public money.
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