The government has announced new contracts for Prison Education Services, and Milton Keynes College Group has been given the responsibility for twenty-nine state sector prisons.  The result of the tender means the College Group will remain one of the largest providers of such education services in the country, with almost a third of the prison estate coming under its remit.  The new contracts will run up to 2029. 

The Group will be responsible for three groups of prisons; Kent, Surrey and Sussex (11 prisons), Avon and South Dorset & Devon and North Dorset (10 prisons) and the one which includes the Milton Keynes region, South Central (9 prisons from Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire to the south coast).  It also holds the contract for the privately-run, Fosse Way prison in Leicestershire. 

CEO and Principal of MK College Group, Sally Alexander, says, “This announcement represents a significant vote of confidence in the work of our prison education services teams and we’re enormously proud of them and the work they do.  Over the years, hundreds of offenders have gone from prison to work and fulfilling careers, going back to their families and communities to become constructive, taxpaying members of society.  Done well, prison education works in cutting reoffending rates and healing damaged lives.  It is beneficial for society and the economy.” 

The College’s statistics show prison education services have an enviable record, with 97% of 33,559 offender learners completing their courses. 103,153 individual qualifications have been achieved in a multitude of courses such as Functional skills, IT, Construction, Catering, Barbering, Business, Employability, Creative (Arts, Drama and Music etc.) Well-being and Personal Development. 

Prison Education Services represent a significant contribution to the income of the College Group, and the work undertaken in the sector dovetails with the provision of quality education in the College and at the South Central Institute of Technology. 

Sally says, “I would like to take the opportunity to thank all those people who’ve worked so hard in our prison services team to ensure that the Ministry of Justice’s trust in us has been maintained.  Your work touches and changes many lives, and will continue to do so in the future, thanks to these contract awards.  What you do is the embodiment of Milton Keynes College Group’s core aim, to provide Fairer Futures for All.” 

Teachers and managers from Milton Keynes College Group have been graded Good by Ofsted for their work with offenders at Fosse Way Prison; one of only 7% of establishments across England to obtain a Good grade.  This is an incredible achievement for all at HMP Fosse Way following a challenging period for prisons in recent years.  

It’s especially satisfying for the staff involved because they launched the education service at Fosse Way when it opened two years ago.  Rob Hawkins, the College Group’s Contract Manager for Prison Services was part of the initial team who mobilised HMP Fosse Way.  He says, “It’s really emotional for the colleagues here, because for a long time HMP Fosse Way has been a big part of our lives.  We were responsible for how everything, from how many tables and chairs do we need in which rooms and what pens and paper to buy, right the way up to designing and running the curriculum for our Learners, for us to get a good grade here is really such a boost for everyone in recognition for their hard work.” 

The College Group’s Lead Director for Prison Services, Claire Atkins, says, “The achievement is all the greater when you bear in mind that Fosse Way is a really big prison, which can make effective education a lot harder to achieve.  We’ve got more than 70 staff here spread across two different areas.  Some of them had never worked in education before they came here, and some had never been inside a prison, so we have to thank each and every one of them for getting to grips with the job as well as they have.” 

Rob and Claire are also full of praise for SERCO, the private company that runs Fosse Way.  “You’ve got to have a stable and secure prison before you can hope to make education work,” Rob says, “and they deserve huge credit for that.” 

The Ofsted inspectors praised the team for providing a wide curriculum from entry level courses up to Master’s degrees.  They also said there were good links with employers, helping create courses that would help offenders into work when they finished their sentences, writing that the, “range of academic and vocational pathways reflected both labour market gaps and priorities, as well as prisoners’ interests and job aspirations.” 

The College is committed to building fairer futures for all learners.  Its Information, Advice and Guidance team and Employment Coordinators work with Serco and other partners to provide learners with opportunities both during their time at Fosse Way and on release.  HMIP inspectors noted that “a range of committed and experienced staff and partners supported resettlement work… The combined efforts of these teams had led to many positive outcomes for prisoners.”  

Claire says, “Prisoners will say to you, ‘when I’m in the education areas it doesn’t feel like I’m in prison,’ which is really lovely.  The library and classrooms and workshops have a real Further Education feel to them, almost as if we’re working in just another campus of Milton Keynes College.” 

Prisoners can choose from an extraordinary range of qualifications, including employability, skills, business, teacher training, art, warehousing, plastering, painting and decorating, carpentry, brick laying, finance and many more. 

Claire and Rob say their greatest satisfaction comes when they receive letters from former learners who have finished their sentences and are out in the world, in jobs, living better lives.  “That’s when you see the passion of the staff being repaid,” Claire says.  “They can see they’ve made a real difference to someone, and there’s just no better feeling.” 

To find out more about prison services from MK College Group, visit Prison Services – MK College 

On Thursday 20th February, Milton Keynes College Group hosted its second annual Reading Festival at the Chaffron Centre, bringing together over 80 attendees, including Prison Services staff and HMPPS colleagues, to discuss the importance of literacy and strategies to foster a love of reading among learners.

The participants of the event had an opportunity to participate in a series of workshops, led by the Group’s Prison Services colleagues. These showcased the best practice and innovative ideas that the staff were working with in their prison teams. Workshops included the team from HMP Standford Hill sharing how they have created creative spaces for reading around the prison and the impact this has had on readers, and Lindsay Battersby, Neurodiversity Support Manager at HMP Wakefield, shared her phonics awareness project with the participants.

The event featured speakers from the Shannon Trust and education teams from prisons, including Lil Norbury, Priority Projects Lead (Curriculum) for HMPPS, and the author Adam Farrer. With a passion for prison education, Adam was keen to encourage the attendees, emphasising the change the College Group staff could make with the work they do and the impact they have on prison learners. Sharing about a workshop he had run in one of the Group’s contracted prisons, Adam remarked on how engaged and inquisitive he had found the learners.

Milton Keynes College Group’s Prison Services Quality Team also received a generous donation of 1,200 books from World of Books, who are supporting the Group’s prison education departments with continued donations. The books were taken by staff at the end of the day to be stocked into lending libraries and classrooms across the prison education network.

Ian Merrill, CEO of Shannon Trust, introduced the Trust’s work and echoed some of the statistics that the prison teams had shared. 16% of all adults in the UK have very low literacy, and this figure rises closer to 60% in prisons. Shannon Trust have seen a growth in the numbers of learners they’re working with, to more than 11,000 in 2024, with more than 2000 peer mentors supporting their work across England.

With Ian stepping down as the Trust’s CEO in the next couple of weeks, Sally Alexander, CEO and Group Principal of Milton Keynes College Group, thanked him for his leadership: “We’re incredibly grateful for the work the Trust does. It’s like having extra members of staff! The work of the peer mentors is essential – it’s an initiative we’re looking at taking forward on campus. Everything we can do to drive the importance and power of reading is so critical.”

To find out more about MK College Group’s prison services, read more here.

Teachers at HMP Fosse Way and HMP Aylesbury – two of the 30 prisons that MK College Group provides education services for – have worked with His Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS) and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) on a campaign to support prison teaching recruitment. 

The campaign, which officially launched on 16^th January, focuses on bringing the roles of prison teachers to life and includes videos, social media posts, paid adverts, news articles and more. 

The campaign leads with a video asking, “Could you be a prison teacher?” and is accompanied by several articles, each focusing on a different teaching experience. Those articles are now live on the Guardian website and one of the articles is all about Luke Martin, a lecturer at HMP Fosse Way. 

HMPPS have also refreshed their prison education page to provide an overview of teaching in prisons and what life is like as a prison teacher. 

You can read Luke’s article here, along with the others in the campaign here: 

• ‘A new sense of purpose’: how I went from running a pub to a career in prison teaching | Do Something Extraordinary | The Guardian 

• ‘Beyond qualifications, there are so many benefits’: a teacher and a former prisoner on the importance of education in jails | Do Something Extraordinary | The Guardian 

• ‘You need to be a listener as well as a teacher’ – the truth about education in prison | Do Something Extraordinary | The Guardian 

Claire Atkins, Lead Director of Prison Services at MK College Group, comments: “This is an exciting campaign that will help shine a light on the important work done by prison educators and encourage others to come and apply. We’re very proud of the work we do in prisons to support learners with their education and to improve their prospects both during their time in prison and upon their release into the community – it’s all part of our work to deliver Fairer Futures for all. All of the staff involved in the campaign did a fantastic job, and we hope that this campaign will show the positive sides of working in prison education”. 

Well done to Sherry Emir, Kirsty Jones and Luke Martin from Fosse Way, and Irene Daniels from HMP Aylesbury, for their outstanding acting skills and work with the MoJ to promote prison education. 

You can find out more about the work we do in prison education here Prison Services – MK College  

MK College Group delivers sparkling GCSE results at high security prison

Nine prisoners at the high security Frankland Prison in County Durham, have achieved a 100% pass rate in GCSE English.  The classes were run by teachers from Milton Keynes College Group. 

78% achieved grade C (4) and above, almost three times as many as in FE Colleges around the country.  What’s more, the students managed their success with just one year of study, one three-and-a-half-hour session a week and no internet access.

Jo Watmore is Education Manager at HMP Frankland, and she says, “We had prisoners in the main part of the prison and some were vulnerable prisoners, so we had to run two cohorts.  They had to apply, have an interview and take a skills test before they could enrol. We also had to ask the prison service not to transfer them elsewhere in the high security estate for a year, so their work wasn’t interrupted half way through.  Most are serving long or full life sentences but now they can progress to be mentors, learning assistants or even move on to a degree – it’s all about enabling a career in custody.”

This month, thirty prisoners are enrolled on GCSE courses in English and now maths.

“People often ask me what’s the point of giving classes to people who are not going to be released for years, if at all, but I think their punishment is being locked up and this is about providing meaningful, purposeful activity for some of the hardest to reach people in society to give them a chance to progress and develop themselves.  Education is a way to help them change their mindset and change the way they view themselves and society, and after all, the majority do get out eventually and have to rejoin the community.  Studies have shown education helps prisoners become more settled, less aggressive and even less likely to self-harm.”

One student was doing his GCSE at the same time as his son, and Jo says that gave him something he could bond with his family with, albeit on the telephone.  

“I’m so proud of not just the learners but also the teaching staff who have to take huge credit for these results in really tough circumstances.  People can spend many years in prison, so telling them, we’re not only going to lock you up, but there will be little meaningful for you to do for the next few decades just seems the wrong way to go.  Education surely has to be the better way.  At Milton Keynes College Group we are committed to providing Fairer Futures for all, and that includes people in prison.”