Declining standards in young offender institutions

Young offender institutions (YOIs) house children and young people who have committed a criminal offence. They play a vital role in helping to turn around the lives of these children and young people. They are meant to offer at least 15 hours of education a week. A joint review by Ofsted and His Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP), published October 2nd2024, shows that educational opportunities for children in YOIs have steadily declined for the last decade.

Key findings include -

Leaders do not make sure that children spend enough time in education classes and do not make sure that lessons are free from disruption

According to YOI rules, children in the YOIs are meant to receive at least 15 hours of education per week. However, information provided by GOV.UK suggests that the educational provision for children in YOIs is equivalent to the provision for other children in full-time education. For example, according to GOV.UK, children at Werrington are 'offered 30 hours of education a week', and those at Feltham can access an education service that is 'open 5 days a week'.

The reality is that children often have access to far fewer hours of education. At recent inspections, inspectors have found that many children receive only 10 to 13 hours of education per week. If they are particularly vulnerable and cannot join mainstream classes, then this amount is likely to be much reduced. The shortfalls in hours have often been caused by a lack of staff in the education provision and in the YOI as a whole. Many lessons have been cancelled because there is either no teacher or no officer to escort children to their lessons.

It is only in a small number of YOIs, including YOIs where staff turnover remains a problem, that leaders and managers ensure that children have a weekly timetable that is closer to typical full-time education hours.

Lessons that are scheduled have too frequently been curtailed or interrupted. Leaders and managers have prioritised activities other than education. For example, children miss part or all of the lessons to attend reviews, visit the chapel, or have their allotted exercise time. Being significantly late for class has become the norm. Children are escorted to classes up to an hour and a half late and finish early because officers arrive to collect them before the scheduled end of lessons. This makes it difficult for teachers to plan curriculums well, because they do not have control over when their lessons start and finish, or which children will be attending them.

When allocating children to courses, YOI staff have not focused closely enough on the subjects that meet children's educational needs

In YOIs, staff usually meet at an 'allocations board' (or similar) to assign children to courses or work activities. Allocations should be based on children's current educational attainment, their future career and study goals, and their interests. In earlier inspections covered as part of this report, this principle was usually the cornerstone of allocating children to courses.

Instead, over the last decade, a culture has developed whereby YOI leaders use allocation processes as a way of managing problems with violence and conflict. Staff almost always allocate children to courses based mainly on which other offenders they can mix with and which they need to be kept apart from, or on the wing in which they live. Rather than being used in exceptional cases, which would be understandable, 'keep-aparts' and restrictions based on wing locations have become the standard way to allocate children to courses.

Leaders and managers do not have effective strategies for managing children's challenging behaviour

Current strategies for managing behaviour at YOIs rely too heavily on keeping children apart from one another, or on excluding children from classes. Teachers often lack training and support to deal appropriately with challenging behaviour.

This was not always the case. In the earlier inspections that are part of this review, which took place before 2017, inspectors found that teachers had a good knowledge of how to manage behavioural issues. They used reflection rooms and cool-down periods to help children swiftly return to class.

The decline in leaders', managers' and teachers' ability to manage children's behaviour became evident 5 to 6 years ago. Since then, inspectors have found frequent instances of low-level bad behaviour in lessons. This behaviour disrupts teachers' attempts to teach curriculums, wastes scarce lesson time and frustrates children who want to study. In too many cases, teachers struggle to maintain control of the classroom. Children openly defy them. Some children direct sexualised and racist language towards staff. They threaten peers and occasionally teachers with physical violence. Sometimes their violent actions seriously disrupt or halt lessons and lead to damaged classrooms. In these instances, teachers are unable to challenge the children and are fearful of doing so.

In a minority of cases, children have more positive attitudes. This is because teachers have had the necessary training to tackle poor behaviour. It is also because leaders and teachers set clear guidelines for behaviour in lessons. They reward children for good behaviour and sanction poor behaviour. In these cases, inspectors have also noted the positive impact of youth workers on children's behaviour.

The failure of education leaders and managers to recruit sufficient teaching staff has led to narrow, fragmented and tumultuous curriculums

The breadth and depth of the curriculums that education providers offer have declined over the last decade. This is due largely to providers' inability to recruit and retain sufficient specialist teaching staff.

Because they have too few teachers, leaders and managers cancel many planned courses. In some recent inspections, inspectors found that up to half of the vocational training workshops were closed because there were not enough staff. Mathematics and English classes are too often covered by non-specialist teachers, or else the number of hours offered to children is greatly reduced. Children who already have GCSEs get very few opportunities to study at higher levels because there are not enough specialist staff with the relevant expertise to teach them.

Children rightly express frustration at these issues. They feel disappointed that they cannot study the mathematics and English qualifications they need to improve their lives. Children also become despondent and demotivated when courses get cancelled part way into their studies because staff leave and there is no replacement.

Leaders and managers from YOIs and education providers have not worked together well enough to prevent a decline in the quality of education at the 4 YOIs

Most senior leaders at YOIs say that the education provider's performance is not strong enough. However, inspectors find that YOI leaders do not understand curriculum design or implementation well enough to be able to challenge education leaders about poor performance or to set actions for improvement. For example, YOI leaders and managers' knowledge of the progress that children make because of their studies is too limited, and they do not understand the weaknesses in the educational provision precisely enough.

The relationship between YOI leaders and education leaders is too often strained.   Although YOI leaders are critical of shortcomings in education departments, they generally do not collaborate with education providers effectively to improve the situation. On other occasions, the relationship is too close. Some senior YOI leaders do not think that they need to hold the education provider to account, despite a decline in performance.

Leaders do not have an effective strategy to tackle longstanding attendance problems; for the past 10 years, children's attendance at education has often been too low

No single YOI has had consistently high rates of attendance over the last decade. At many recent inspections, children's attendance has been low. Any improvement in attendance rates tends to be fragile. Inspectors have found numerous examples of attendance improving from poor levels to good levels, but then declining again at the subsequent inspection.

In too many cases, leaders do not have an effective strategy to deal with poor attendance. Leaders frequently identify poor attendance as a weakness in self-assessment reports but do not set meaningful actions to improve it. They also fail to analyse the reasons for poor attendance. Inspectors also identify a lack of encouragement/incentive to help poor attenders improve their attendance, and a lack of consistently applied sanctions when children refuse to attend.

There has been a lack of investment in the infrastructure that children need for a good education, in particular, investment in information and communication technology (ICT) equipment

Classroom and training workshop infrastructure is not good enough. In the worst cases, inspectors have found classrooms that are oppressive and dirty, with offensive graffiti on the walls. Too many classrooms also lack basic resources, such as whiteboards or even enough chairs. In some cases, classrooms had recently been redecorated and provided a more welcoming and conducive study environment.

Although many vocational workshops contain appropriate resources, in a significant minority of cases children do not have access to the right equipment. The upgrades that managers buy are not always installed quickly enough. For example, inspectors saw one case where children studying on a barista course had no access to a working coffee machine and one where children on a catering course had to use domestic rather than industrial cookers.

In the large majority of cases, children have not had access to up-to-date ICT equipment. This makes it difficult for teachers to run modern ICT curriculums, and for children to gain the necessary contemporary digital skills. There are early signs of improvement in this area: at very recent inspections, inspectors have found that more children have access to modern ICT equipment, such as laptops, to support their studies.

Ofsted's Chief Inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver said:

"I am deeply concerned by these findings. The children in these institutions are entitled to a high-quality education that supports them to turn their lives around. The system is failing them.

I am especially concerned that children are spending extended periods in isolation, further compromising their opportunity to become successful and productive citizens upon their release."

HMIP's Chief Inspector, Charlie Taylor said:

"Children in custody are among the most troubled and challenging in society, often with experience of being in care and having had very disrupted education in the community. Their time in custody ought to represent a golden opportunity to address that through consistent interventions and support, but we continue to report on very poor provision, particularly for those children separated from their peers in response to conflict. Education in our YOIs needs to be prioritised and its delivery transformed if we want to see less youth crime and more children going on to lead successful lives."

Education and rehabilitation must be given precedence over punitive measures by the Government and the organisations in charge of YOIs. The likelihood that these children will return to society as contributing, law-abiding adults is greatly reduced if the educational system in YOIs is not drastically changed.