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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I thoroughly support the amendment. It gives me two particular moments of pleasure—little rays of sunshine from a cloudy sky. One ray is falling on my noble friend on the Front Bench: it is the first time that I have noticed our Front Bench supporting modular courses. At last they are beginning to see the other side of the argument. The other ray is falling on me: at last I am beginning to understand what benefits might come from giving responsibility for prison education to local education authorities. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for the insight into how it would integrate both halves of a sentence under one management. I hope, too, that it will be allowed for in the way that the noble Baroness and her team set out the arrangements for commissioning the education in prisons that will be undertaken by local education authorities, ensuring that they will have enough flexibility to integrate provision and not find themselves using two different providers with completely different ideas about what education should consist of. It is very important that we look at the idea of prison education being special and that we try to get away from at least the impression given in paragraphs (c) and (d) of new Section 18A(2) that in some way it should just be a continuation of what has failed before. Of course, for some youth offenders it will be appropriate that they carry on with their education—those who have done something immensely silly but are otherwise good students and just need to get back to real life. However, many pupils in prisons will have broken with education and will need to find a way back that is entirely different from what they rejected as school education. My noble friend used two words that I completely support. One was "intensive". An intensive experience is much better than being stuck with an hour a day, and it provides much greater potential for transformation. The other was "communication". It is not just maths and English that these kids have not grasped; it is how to get on with, talk to and relate to other people. Those things can be equally well addressed—in fact, they can be extremely well addressed—in these short courses. Therefore, apart from the wording of the amendment, I am entirely happy with it.