Ms Claire O'Connell:

On the physical environment, and again I am not familiar with every prison, but the physical environment in the older prisons is not ideal. I can speak for the situation in Mountjoy Prison, where classroom space is at a premium. It is a difficult challenge for the head teachers to manage timetabling classes in rooms big enough to facilitate them. In the earlier session, it was mentioned that the music classrooms are tiny and can barely accommodate one or two people. Therefore, improvements are needed in the physical infrastructure we are working in. That said, the teachers do wonderful things in their classrooms to make them as welcoming a learning environment as possible. While the physical spaces are small, there is a great sense of learning in the classrooms because of the way the teachers have decorated and presented them.

Turning to resources and learning materials, we are well provided with those in respect of books and those types of materials. Regarding technological resources, our education centres in Dublin have had some fantastic widescreen TVs installed in the classrooms and those are linked with our computer systems. It allows us to broaden the way we provide education. One thing prison education teachers have been training in as part of continuous professional development, CPD, is universal design for learning, UDL. Core to that approach is the ability to be able to provide learning materials in many ways. In that regard, then, we are well resourced.