EDM 1542: Prison education insourcing

That this House notes the worrying state of prison education, with 82 percent of prison and young offender institutions judged by Ofsted as requiring improvement or inadequate for overall effectiveness of education, skills and work provision; further notes that contracts for the new Prison Education Service (PES) have recently been awarded, with groups of prisons assigned to one of three providers, all of which previously delivered education under the Prison Education Framework; notes that prison educators are paid less in England than their counterparts in other further education workplaces, with the Education Select Committee warning in 2022 that poor pay, lack of career development, unsafe working environments and no time or respect to do a quality job has left the recruitment and retention of qualified and experienced prison educators at crisis point; believes rehabilitation should be at the heart of incarceration, and education should be at the heart of rehabilitation, but outsourcing has for years diverted vital resources away from the development, design and delivery of truly meaningful prison education and has overseen the de-professionalisation of education into a commodity, failing prisoners, staff and wider society alike; and calls on the Government to explore all legal options for terminating the PES contracting process immediately and instead insourcing all such provision under an effectively resourced, publicly owned national prison education system that supports educators to deliver a broad and balanced curriculum to prisoners, with a national contract for prison education staff and parity of esteem with further education.