Ms Caron McCaffrey:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to address the members today on this important issue and to discuss the positive collaboration that exists between the Irish Prison Service and the education and training boards, ETBs, in the provision of prison education.

As the Chairman mentioned, I am joined today by my colleague, Mr. Fergal Black, who is the director of care and rehabilitation in the Irish Prison Service. Mr. Black has responsibility for the provision of prisoner services, including education.

There are currently more than 4,100 people accommodated in our prisons daily. In terms of education, the Irish Prison Service provides a broad range of services and activities in which prisoners can participate daily. These services provide daily constructive activities for those in prison while serving their sentence and are very much designed to target the root causes of offending. They provide an opportunity for prisoners to address their educational needs or skills deficits through participation in education or work and training, which supports their eventual reintegration back into society. I am happy to discuss the provision of these services in more detail today and to answer any questions the members may have in this regard.

I record my appreciation to all of the head teachers and teachers who support and encourage prisoners every day and specifically to recognise their efforts on behalf of people in custody over the past two years during the pandemic in what was a very challenging environment within our prison system.

The Department of Education provides an allocation of 220 whole-time teacher equivalents to the Irish Prison Service through the education and training boards. We are very grateful for this provision. Education in prisons is delivered in partnership between the ETBs and the prison service with a focus on providing education that is quality assured, student centred and facilitates lifelong learning. There are outstanding teachers in all of our prison schools and our prison schools represent a positive learning environment.

In general, education programmes are adapted to take account of the diversity of the prisoner population and the complex nature of prison life, including segregation requirements and high levels of prisoner turnover. The partnership between ourselves and the ETBs endeavours to meet the needs of prisoners through helping them cope with their sentence, achieve personal development and prepare for life after release.

Prison education includes a core element of basic education incorporating reading, writing, numeracy and IT literacy. Indeed, our education staff are particularly vigilant in identifying basic education needs. It is important to highlight the significant fact that over 70% of people in custody are early school-leavers. The median school-leaving age of those in our care is 14 years of age. It is an unfortunate fact of life that many people who come into our care have had a negative experience of education in their past. That is why the provision of quality education and regular and consistent access to the prison school is so important. As W.B. Yeats once said, "Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire."

Anybody who has visited a prison education school will have seen the fire in the eyes of the students there and their burning ambition and hopes for their future. The prison school is their gateway to a better life for themselves and for their families.

One of the key challenges for the IPS is to ensure that our students have regular and consistent access to prison schools to provide that opportunity and hope. Unfortunately the loss of a substantial number of staff on a daily basis to support prisoner escorts can have a detrimental impact on the opening of schools. This is an area we are committed to addressing and we will seek additional funding through the 2023 Estimates process to strengthen the number of staff in our prison escort corps and thus alleviate the draw of staff away from prisoner services.

The Prison Education Strategy 2019-2022 is a joint strategy between the Irish Prison Service and Education and Training Boards Ireland, ETBI. It reflects and acknowledges the unique nature of prison education in terms of the target population and the environment in which education is delivered. It sets out a commitment to broad-based education provision and includes supporting integration and sentence planning. The strategy details agreed actions for prison education under seven strategic priorities. Good progress has been made in all of the actions and these priorities will remain relevant in the coming years.

In the three years, 2019 to 2021, more than €3.7 million has been spent by the IPS on supporting the prison education services. During this period, the use of technology to support the delivery of prisoner services including the delivery of education was increased due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the IPS continues to work with the ETBs to make greater use of in-cell learning opportunities, remote teaching and education delivered via our prison TV channel. Balancing the demands for digital literacy among prisoners with security constraints is also another key challenge for the service and an area we hope to address in the coming years. Embracing technology and providing a blended approach to learning increases the ability of teachers to extend education provision to students, especially to those on restricted prison regimes or confined to cells due to Covid-19 measures. Innovation and embracing technology will form a central part of the next Irish Prison Service strategic plan to be published next year.

Greater linkages between the work and training area in the prisons and the prison schools are being encouraged and there have been a number of good examples of this collaboration in recent years including barista training, Football Association of Ireland coaching certificates and more recently a pop-up restaurant in Cork prison in collaboration with the Munster Technological University. In the past year the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science met with representatives of the ETBs, IPS and Solas to discuss how we can ensure that all students in custody are provided with appropriate pathways and links to further education on release, through the ETB adult guidance network throughout the country. Work is ongoing to formalise and strengthen these arrangements, which will offer great potential for our students into the future. Both the director of care and rehabilitation and I will be happy to take any questions members may have.