Tag: study

A good news story for prison education – and what it could be…

Author: | 9 Jun 2025

With prison education under strain, our Ambassador, journalist David Shipley, finds a new report ‘incredibly encouraging’ on the effectiveness of the in-cell education channel Way2Learn, part of WayOut TV that operates in half of all prisons

Prison education is a strange beast. Everyone seems to recognise how important it is, with research by the Ministry of Justice in 2018 having found that ‘people who had participated in education whilst in prisons were significantly less likely to reoffend within 12 months of release’. Part of this may be because people who leave prison with good literacy and numeracy are more likely to find, and keep a job after release. We know, of course, that being in work is one of the most significant factors reducing someone’s likelihood of reoffending. So the Ministry of Justice, and the Prison Service, want education in prisons to be widely-available and of good quality.

Unfortunately it often falls short. Ofsted, the education standards’ body responsible for inspecting education in prisons and young offenders institutions, ‘have long been concerned about the standards of education in our prisons’.

Partly, this is due to limited budgets and the resultant challenges around hiring good teachers to work in prisons. But the environment itself is a barrier to education. Our jails are becoming less safe, with assaults up 14 per cent in the last annual figures, and serious assaults up 13 per cent. Dangerous, crowded prisons make learning hard. If a prisoner is concerned about their physical safety, they may find it almost impossible to concentrate in a lesson. Those who are worried about their safety travelling from cell to classroom may decide to stay ‘banged-up’ and avoid the risk of education entirely.

Barrier of embarrassment and shame

Another barrier to education can be shame. Around two-thirds of prisoners having literacy skills below that expected of an 11-year-old, and many dropped-out or were excluded from the education system. As a result, and unsurprisingly, they find the thought of sitting in a classroom and having their lack of education made public embarrassing and shameful. This fear alone can deter many prisoners from participating in education.

In order to address these barriers, WayOutTV created Way2Learn a decade ago. This service offers 18 scheduled courses, covering everything from music and creative writing to food hygiene and construction. There are also courses on broader skills, like goal-setting and running a business. Prisoners participate by watching the course segments and then completing and submitting worksheets to Way2Learn, where they are marked. Results got towards qualifications awarded by UWE.

‘An avenue of learning’

Now academics from UWE have conducted an impact evaluation of Way2Learn. What they’ve found is incredibly encouraging. Prison staff, prison governors and former Way2Learn students all have very positive views on the service. Way2Learn gives prisoners a sense of purpose, improving their mental health, while also developing useful skills. It also provides ‘an avenue of learning for…men who struggle to engage with more mainstream or traditional learning’.

The report  is a fascinating and encouraging document. After reading it I reflected that Way2Learn shows what the future of much prison education could be. The Prison Service is determined to increase the use of technology in our jails. More and more prisons are rolling-out in-cell ‘laptops’, which inmates can use to contact staff, email friends and family and perform prison ‘life-admin’ tasks (but not go on the internet).

Way2Learn could and should be offered on these systems, allowing prisoners to study a wide range of subjects in their cells, and removing the need for paper forms. I do hope that Prisons’ Minister James Timpson reads this evaluation . It’s clear that the prison service could do much more by working constructively with Way2Learn.

Read our scholars’ stories

What funding is available for people with convictions or in prison to study for a degree? See our Scholarships page.

Best decision of my life

Author: | 18 Dec 2019

The best decision of my life. 

How evolution theorist Charles Darwin helped snap one Longford scholar out of a stupor whilst incarcerated in the US. After studying at Cambridge, here he considers his life-changing decision…..

Great Meadow.

Sounds like the name of some quaint resort set among lilies and lilacs, tall trees and lush grass.  The reality is more sombre. Great Meadow belies its name. Instead it is a rough and raw maximum-security prison in upstate New York.  It was here, behind the imposing concrete walls of this prison, I made the best decision of my life, to enrol in college.

I was pushed toward my decision by a fellow inmate who walked up to me one grey morning in the equally grey and grim prison yard.  He looked at me momentarily before asking what I was doing.  I didn’t know what he meant until he clarified that I could and should be spending my time more productively, namely by enrolling in the prison’s college programme. I looked at him, then looked past him, up towards one of several guard towers overlooking the yard and its prisoners.

Before long I was in a classroom, listening to a history professor discussing Charles Darwin and the Victorian crisis of faith.

For me, as perhaps others, education is enlightenment, a recalibration of thinking, a refocus of perspective.  The ability to see oneself and the world as not just ordinary but extraordinary.

Before college, I was adrift in prison. My thinking was adrift, and limited.  I was like someone sitting in the crow’s nest of an old whale ship.  On the lookout for whales, yet unable to see anything save miles upon miles of undulating blue sea rolling over and onward towards oblivion beneath an endless expanse of blue sky.  Like the natural elements, the flow of routine days in prison can have a hypnotic effect on the mind, on one’s outlook. The tedium can render you drowsy and numb to the point where you’re unaware of this, forgetful of that.

Education snapped me out of my stupor and instilled crystal-clear awareness.

Following my release and deportation to Britain, I was relatively confident of getting a decent job.  But after two years of working in a restaurant, I’m still searching for that ever-elusive decent job.  In the interim I have attended and graduated from the Institute of Continuing Education, an adult college which is part of Cambridge University. And, while I’m still looking for a better job than the one I presently have, I’ve been uplifted and fortified by my Cambridge education. Uplifted and gratified, for although the job search is necessary, it’s not primary.  The accumulation of knowledge and wisdom is for me the only sensible goal in life.