With the government having announced plans for secure colleges for young offenders, Paul Phillips uses his experience of delivering adult prison education to outline the issues that will need consideration.
The whole world of offender learning has faced massive change over the last 18 months with the introduction of the OLASS (Offender Learning and Skills Service) 4 approach.

Essentially, that has enabled a much greater focus to be given to the skills agenda and to ensure that prisoners are equipped with the latest skills and expertise to enable progression to secure work when their sentence is completed.

The transition process has not been easy but the approach taken by the government has been highly necessary.

Most recently, the government announced plans for ‘secure colleges’.

At Weston College, we are the offender learning provider for a large number of prisons across the South West and the concept of secure colleges is one that is interesting, but one that also will need great planning for such a model to become successful.

From my perspective as principal, we need to take the lessons from OLASS 4 and look at what has been happening in terms of youth custody, which is currently generally outside our remit.

The key messages from my perspective are that education has got to be the priority and the qualifications on offer must be those that can lead to sustainable employment or progression to higher levels of study.

Are the entrepreneurs of the future out there who can create these secure colleges?

It is also imperative that we recognise that many offenders will either have learning disabilities, special educational needs or mental health needs.

Therefore the funding that follows the prisoners must ensure that they have the additional support for success.

Currently, under OLASS 4 methodologies, albeit for older prisoners, the levels of additional learning support available are significantly below that required.

As the concept paper from government suggests, the secure college must achieve the very best educational provision combined with rigorous security.

If these two parameters can be achieved then there is a real change of taking the free school/academy model and creating an enviable resource for the future.

There is also the need to consider the whole environment that will be needed to impact upon such change.

So are the entrepreneurs of the future out there who can create these secure colleges?

I believe that there is a key solution which must combine the very best of OLASS 4 methodologies with experts in security.

Both these parameters must have equal priority in planning for the future, but equally the whole concept of youth custody needs re-examination.

If the government is serious about these proposals, then it will need to engage with outstanding learning providers with real expertise in the skills agenda.

Similarly, these providers will need to work with organisations who have proven expertise in security.

This is certainly not an easy proposition, but I believe these providers exist.

The paper from the government, entitled transforming youth custody — putting education at the heart of detention, may be the catalyst that we need in this country.

It clearly needs to be thought out in great detail and then of course there is the cost benefit analysis that will be crucial.

The concept will not be cheap, but, as the green paper states, with average cost per place running from £65,000 to £212,000 per annum and with reoffending rates of at least 70 per cent, change is necessary.

The strategies announced are feasible and to be applauded. I do have a caveat however and that is use the experts from the world of FE and others to influence and support these changes.

Dr Paul Phillips OBE, principal, Weston College, Somerset

 

Former House of Commons Education Select Committee specialist  Ben Nicholls is head of policy and communications at London’s Newham College. He writes exclusively for FE Week every month.

FE colleagues probably have little time to watch TV and, if they do, they may reasonably avoid anything to do with education.

I’m glad, though, that I’ve found time to watch the start of Tough Young Teachers, a new BBC3 series following six Teach First participants in three of London’s more challenging schools.

I’m glad for lots of reasons, not least because it increases my ever-growing respect for what teaching colleagues across the country do every day. There can’t be a more valuable or under-valued job.

I’m glad, also, because it confirms both my fears about, and delight in, education on TV.

Professor Mary Beard, talking about her experiences on Jamie’s Dream School in 2012, argued that while the series was “useful”, we “have to be very clear that we were dealing with a group of kids and teachers who, in some ways, were fighting for the attention of the TV cameras”.

So, while TV education can be highly entertaining, and can both shape and stimulate important debate (as well as raise teachers’ status), it cannot ever be the full picture, and we should never pretend it is.

Finally, though, I’m glad because the programme helped me crystallise some of my own puzzled thoughts about teacher training.

Previously, I’ve felt — and written here — that the profession needs to attract people from all walks of life, with all sorts of skills and backgrounds. But Tough Young Teachers has really brought home that teachers need just as robust training as doctors, firefighters, soldiers, or any other professionals.

I know teachers who found their training pretty useless. I know teachers, too, who refer back to it every day.

These are issues of quality, which arguably need addressing — but neither scenario negates the importance of training itself.

That importance is summarised by the tough young teacher who declares, after her second lesson: “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Learning on the job is important, but it can’t be the whole package. Criticising Teach First isn’t my purpose here. The scheme has perhaps done more than anything else to encourage people towards teaching who would never have considered it before.

It just needs to give those people some more training — and I can fairly safely say that most Teach First participants, in my experience, agree. Tough Young Teachers comes at a time when the National Union of Students is running its own campaign to ensure that FE teachers still need to qualify — against a government which disagrees, and which already allows the unqualified to teach in Free Schools.

My own college is clear that teachers need to be qualified, and we’re glad that our Student Union agrees with the importance of this.

It’s a question, though, which is particularly apt in vocational subjects where practical experience is critical for teachers, and highly valued by students.

Proposals being developed by thinktanks and others to facilitate professional secondments into FE will need to consider this question very carefully.

To return to Dream School, I can do no better than quote student Nana Kwame.

When asked whether subject knowledge or ability to communicate mattered more in a teacher, he responded: “You can’t pick between the two — you need someone in the middle, who knows what they’re talking about [but] can get along with you”.

The House of Commons Education Select Committee robustly defended this position, stating in 2012: “There is no clear formula for an ‘outstanding’ teacher… although good subject knowledge, overall academic ability and a range of personal and inter-personal skills are vital”.

But the committee also argued forcefully that “school-based training is vital in preparing a teacher for their future career”.

Six weeks in the summer before Lesson One cannot, with respect to Teach First, ever be enough — and Tough Young Teachers supports that position.

There’s no question that the six participants are pretty tough, not to mention a plethora of other superlatives — they just need to be trained as well.