What is A Review of Reading Education in Prisons—and what can it tell us about literacy and prison settings?

“You can’t teach phonics through a cell door” —this is how one prison educator described the experience of teaching literacy during the pandemic. Social distancing procedure advised that individual contact was limited to interactions of necessity, and although many institutions provided education packs to be completed in-cell, these demanded a moderate level of reading ability, rendering them far too difficult to use without support for many prison learners.

This means that prison literacy levels haven’t been seeing anywhere near the support and skill growth that’s needed. It’s part of a wider historic trend surrounding literacy and prison settings in that learners in the justice system aren’t in receipt of anywhere near enough support and instruction, but the most uncomfortable data still lies ahead in the recent responses to these pandemic findings.

One year on: literacy and prison settings in 2023

 When it comes to stoking a post-pandemic reboot around literacy and prison, it’s been slow progress.

Following the publication of the HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales’s Annual Report 2022-2023, Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor wrote on LinkedIn:

“During the thematic review, prisons were recovering from the pandemic lockdowns and continuing to operate very reduced regimes. Disappointingly, this remains the case in far too many prisons. Recent HMIP inspections have been highly critical of the amount of time prisoners are spending locked up and the lack of purposeful activity. It is in this context that we are publishing this review of progress. It shows that things have not improved at anything like the rate that Ofsted and HMIP would have expected.”

Literacy and prison have somewhat of a reverse symbiotic relationship: individuals with low literacy have a far higher risk of entering the justice system. If literacy levels can be raised during that period, the low literacy stimuli (most prominently struggling to find employment and social isolation) are removed from that individual’s life, meaning that they’re no longer limited to the options that may have directed them toward criminality in the first place.

Essentially— literacy opens doors and changes lives for the better, and when that literacy education isn’t being received in prisons, lives tend not to change anywhere near as frequently.

Literacy Rates in UK Prisons

According to the Shannon Trust, over 50% of those in prison either can’t read, or struggle to. Although estimates and measuring systems for reading vary across sources, it’s sometimes thought to be as high as 70%. It’s a figure that gives us a lot of insight into some of the reasons why people might end up in the justice system, and what kinds of support frameworks will have the most powerful positive effect on life chances upon release— like improving literacy.

Literacy and Prisons: Neurodiversity Rates

There is another factor to consider in the literacy support balance: neurodiversity in prisons and their internal demographics.

A 2021 report by the UK Chief Inspector of Prisons— ‘Neurodiversity in the Criminal Justice System’—suggests it’s possible that half of the people entering the prison system can “be expected to have some form of neurodivergent condition which impacts their ability to engage”.

As of Summer 2022, the UK prison population stood at around 89,520, and by that rhetoric, around 44,760 of those individuals are likely to be neurodivergent.

Speech and Language professionals who contributed to the call for evidence for the above research also cited an estimate that a staggering 80% of individuals within a secure estate had some form of speech, language or communication need.

What does this tell us about learning and literacy in the UK Prison population?

It tells us that when it comes to literacy and prison, it’s not just that individuals with a secure estate aren’t receiving adequate literacy instruction. It highlights a climate of widespread unsupported and often unidentified neurodiversity too.

This means that people who are living with dyslexia, ADHD, Autism, dyscalculia, and other neurodivergent conditions very likely aren’t receiving an education that’s tailored for them and the ways they learn, even in the event that they are receiving a functional form of literacy instruction.

Literacy rates in UK prisons: What are educators facing?

 A lot of the relevant teaching issues appear systemic: A 2021 UCU and Prisoner Learning Alliance report into prison educator lives called Hidden Voices— The Experiences of Teachers Working in Prisons reveals that those who educate in prisons are consistently facing resourcing issues that impact the quality of learning for those in a secure estate.

It costs around £46,000 in overall resources to keep an individual within a secure estate for a year, and with many competing priorities, in-institution education budgets are tight—making low-cost solutions the order of the day.

Where do we go from here?

The lack of progress from 2022 to 2023 is worrying. We’re no longer bound by pandemic procedure, and yet learning hasn’t recovered to pre-pandemic standards, let alone seen the boosts that we need to decrease recidivism and improve lives on a broader scale.

The answer lies in taking the prison literacy issue back to its nucleus and ensuring that individuals have access to reading. The ability to read in-cell offers the opportunity for skill growth and offers a boost to mental health— which is vital to support when it comes to fostering a successful release that ultimately ends in employment.

Literacy acquisition is an in-depth process that requires reading confidence as well as instructional consistency— and learners require a solution that supports skill growth, as well as serves an immediate reading need.

Solving reading problems on such a large scale is a puzzle—
but there are solutions. 

It may seem like an impossible puzzle, but if we all play our part in offering a piece to the solution, we can complete the puzzle successfully together. We want to help educators make the most of their resources and their bandwidth, and we want to ensure that individuals within a secure estate have access to reading support that opens the door to employment and learning further down the line. That’s why we’re so proud of the ReaderPen Secure: where you may be struggling, or you’ve got questions, we’ve got solutions.

Q: Learners within secure estates often suffer from poor mental health and low reading confidence—reading education can feel futile when progress is slow. We’re often dealing with a climate of disillusionment and demotivation, so how do we foster a reading spark?
A: The ReaderPen Secure is,’t just a lesson tool. It’s approved for in-cell use in the UK and allows users to take ownership of their learning: when it’s no longer limited to classroom use, we allow individuals to pursue interest, read correspondence, and hone their skills on their own time and increase the impetus for purposeful activity during often long in-cell periods.

💡 Case Study: Communication and Education

Following participation in a study, Prisoner XX made a request to his governor to make a personal purchase of the device to use in his prison cell in order to support his educational and recreational reading. Prisoner XX used his own money to purchase the new ReaderPen Secure. An individual risk assessment took place and after approval, the use of a ReaderPen Secure was approved for the prisoner’s personal use. The Assistant Governor commented: “I am happy to approve the pen, I do feel they are an extremely valuable asset to support men with communication and education.”

Q: Prison educators are also often suffering from inadequate financial resourcing, low morale, and huge demands on their bandwidth. How does the ReaderPen Secure support in areas where staff retention is low, pressure is high, and a lot of libraries are still closed?

A: Allowing learners to self-support and access books independently means that educators can focus more on whole-class activities— so adding the ReaderPen Secure into the classroom process can have whole-class benefits, even if there isn’t one in every hand. When we improve reading support, we improve reading— and optimise the day-to-day process for our dedicated prison educators, leaving them free to focus on teaching.

Q: Exams are stressful for learners, and can be especially so for those in secure settings: the stakes are high because they relate directly to employment and life chances on release. How do we improve grades?

A: By making sure that when a learner within a secure estate sits their exam, they’re prepared and confident that they can handle the words on the page— but it goes deeper, too. Many learners in secure environments may have low exam confidence, so by adding an exam-approved text-to-speech reading support into the process, we can make sure that they can focus on their answers instead of spending valuable time on decoding.

For more information on the ReaderPen Secure and secure estate settings, contact our Adult and Vulnerable Learners Specialist Hayley Dall-Smith at hayley@scanningpens.com.

You can also catch Hayley speaking about the power of good practice in adult and vulnerable learner settings at the Succeed With Dyslexia Learning Festival, Inspiring Positive Change: Showcasing Good Practice, available on-demand via On24 .