Prison History for New Learners Inside and Outside the Prison

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Higher education is transformative for prisoners. Research conducted by the Ministry of Justice has shown that prisoners funded by Prisoners' Education Trust (PET) to participate in higher education are, a year after release, 25% less likely to reoffend (September 2015) and 26% more likely to be in employment (July 2018). Recent years have also witnessed new developments in the provision of education at all levels to those behind bars. Over the last four years, Prison-University-Partnerships (PUPs), arrangements made between governors and university academics to run courses for prisoners alongside university students have proliferated. The 2016 Coates Review of Prison Education declared that 'education should be at the heart of the prison system'. Through the new Prison Education Framework (PEF), a product of the Coates Review, from April 2019 prison governors will have the freedom to commission courses from educational providers which they believe best meet the needs of their prisoners.However, these developments are accompanied by new challenges. Courses offered through PUPs foster a taste for learning, but are hampered by problems of progression. Few award credit to prisoners for their learning. With the exception of one, none offer enrolment on degree programmes to serving prisoners. Because PUPs rely on the initiative of individual academics often with existing relationships with prisons, typically just one or two courses are offered to prisoners, nearly always in the discipline of criminology and social policy. An alternative, longstanding pathway for prisoners into higher education exists through the Open University (OU), but current higher-education funding arrangements in England, which preclude the use of loans for access courses, do not facilitate exploratory steps into higher-level learning for prisoner learners.This project, which builds upon an existing relationship between the PI and PET established as part of the AHRC-funded project, 'Educating Criminals in 19th Century England', will explore new models of cooperation between higher education providers to better serve the needs of prison learners. Specifically, with the assistance of former and serving prisoners, we will develop a new open educational resource (OER) on the history of prison education in the British Isles. The OER will be designed for and, through PET's Prison-University-Partnerships in Learning network (PUPiL), be promoted to those academics with PUPs to support the courses they deliver in prisons. Inclusion of the OER in the OU's level one module, 'Make Your Learning Count', will demonstrate how links can be made between PUP and OU courses to ensure that prisoners gain credit for their learning through a route which is coherent and supportive of progression.Furthermore, with accreditation from the Chartered Institute of Continuing Professional Development, and through existing networks cultivated by PET, the PI and the OU, the OER will be promoted to prison governors and education officers as a valuable tool for staff development in the context of their new responsibilities under PEF, as well as to staff in prison reform charities, and those in probation and aftercare services. As PET and the OU remain the leading UK institutions for the promotion and delivery of higher education in UK prisons, their coincidental, milestone anniversaries in 2019 will be used to promote the OER to the wider public.