Plain old porridge isn't enough for prisoners any more...

Most former prison inmates reoffend within two years. Sarah Cassidy looks at a government initiative to educate prisoners and teach them a trade

Prison should be a time when offenders face up to what they have done and resolve to go straight. But for most prisoners their time inside does little to help them turn their backs on crime because of the poor state of prison education.

Last month a damning report from the Howard League for Penal Reform condemned the standards of education in young offenders' institutions. It is well known that the education and training in many adult prisons can be even worse, as Fran Abrams shows below in her report of education in Wormwood Scrubs.

Despite this dire state of affairs, prisoners can be rehabilitated. Johnny Vaughan, the TV presenter, and Benjamin Zephaniah, the performance poet, are two well-known former inmates who say that their prison sentences gave them the opportunity to change.

"Going to prison gave me the chance to write and discover my brain," says Vaughan, who served two years for cocaine dealing. "It taught me to value my freedom and to make better use of it."

Zephaniah began his writing career as a 17-year-old after a spell in prison where he was encouraged by a warder to perform his work in public. Birmingham-born Zephaniah was first sent to a remand centre at the age of 14 for burglary. By 17 he had put his prison days behind him. But he has said: "Having spent so much time in these institutions, I was uneducated. I could not read and write."

According to government estimates, fewer than one in five inmates receives any education and training at all. More than 60 per cent of prisoners have such poor basic skills that they are excluded from 96 per cent of all jobs once they are released, says the Department for Education and Skills (DfES).

"Employability is a key factor in reducing reoffending," explains a DfES spokeswoman. "It is particularly concerning because nearly 60 per cent of those discharged from prison in 1996 were reconvicted within two years."

Ministers recognise that education is vital if reoffending is to be reduced and have introduced initiatives to help improve what is on offer. But prison education's disappointing record is unlikely to change unless the current, fragmented provision is radically overhauled, according to David Sherlock, who recently became responsible for inspecting education and training in prisons.

The current system often fails to recognise prisoners' achievements when they transfer between prisons and is vulnerable to cancellation, says Mr Sherlock, chief inspector of the newly formed Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI).

Work-related training is the only "ray of hope" in an otherwise dismal prison education system, he argues. Increasing the links between education and training will be crucial to improving prisoners' skills and their employability.

In the last report of the Training Standards Council, relaunched as the ALI, Mr Sherlock, observed that vocational training was much more popular with prisoners than courses to improve their literacy, numeracy or social skills.

The most conspicuous weakness was the absence of general education in vocational training courses. Whereas the Training Standards Council inspected vocational training in prisons and the Prison Service examined education, the ALI will be responsible for both.

"Very often these people [prisoners] have failed at school and many of them learn better through training rather than via anything that reminds them of school and of that failure," Mr Sherlock says. "You can learn numeracy skills considerably better through car mechanics, in a practical context, than you can by sitting in a classroom."

The DfES and the Prison Service recently launched a new partnership – the Prisoners Learning and Skills Unit – to improve prisoners' education and training, which Mr Sherlock hopes will foster greater co-operation. But despite all the Government's good intentions, there is still a long way to go.

The Education Select Committee plans to take "a long hard look" at prison education this autumn. Its last annual report suggested that radical measures were needed to force prisoners to learn. It proposed looking at cutting prisoners' benefits after their release unless they improved their basic skills while in prison, or only allowing them to be released if they met educational targets.

A spokeswoman for the ALI said: "Pilot inspections for prisons are going extremely well. They show that there are very committed and able people and that equipment is generally good – the key now is to make them more effective."

s.cassidy@independent.co.uk