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The role of the LSC

The Learning and Skills Council is a non-departmental public body which began work in 2001, taking over the roles of the former Further Education Funding Council and the Training and Enterprise Councils. It is responsible for planning and funding high quality education and training for everyone in England other than those in universities. It has a national office in Coventry and nine regional offices overseeing the work of local partnership teams throughout the county. Its budget for 2006-07 was £10.4 billion.

The LSC exists to make England better skilled and more competitive. Its goal is to improve the skills of England’s young people and adults to ensure that the country has a workforce of world-class standard. Its major tasks are to:

• raise participation and achievement by young people
• increase adult demand for learning
• raise skills levels for national competitiveness
• improve the quality of education and training delivery
• equalise opportunities through better access to learning
• improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the sector.

Its vision is that by 2010, young people and adults in England have knowledge and skills matching the best in the world and are part of a truly competitive workforce.

In July 2006 the LSC took over responsibility for offender learning and skills across England when it was charged with the planning, funding and delivery of the new integrated offenders’ learning and skills service (OLASS) across all nine English regions. It received the annual £130 million funding from the Department for Education and Skills and the Youth Justice Board and was expected to improve the quality and quantity of offender education to. It also secured an additional £30 million, over three years, from the European Social Fund.

By integrating offender education within mainstream academic and vocational provision and ensuring offenders experience seamless provision in both custodial and community settings, the LSC hopes to contribute to breaking the cycle of failure that drives re-offending. A major part of the LSC’s task is to help offenders, by ensuring that they are individually managed throughout their sentences, to progress and meet the needs of local employers and job markets. The LSC’s publication Developing the Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service: the Prospectus sets out the LSC’s proposals for developing and reforming the learning and skills service to offenders held in English public sector prisons and to those under supervision in the community in England. The document responded to a number of recommendations as set out in Reducing Re-Offending Through Skills and Employment: Next Steps, and invited comments from key stakeholders, especially through a series of nine regional events run by the LSC. The key proposals involve:

• developing and reforming the way in which learning provision for offenders in custody is planned, organised, delivered and funded, with a principal focus on skills for employment and employability
• widening the scope, range and availability of learning provision for offenders in the community
• ensuring that the learning offered for all offenders is explicitly linked and aligned to other services and interventions, in particular by developing strong joint commissioning arrangements with NOMS commissioners
• supporting improvements in the quality of provision, ensuring that all offenders are able to benefit from existing provision and developments within the wider post-16 sector.

The Government has set a target to reduce re-conviction rates by ten per cent by 2010. Currently 59 per cent of former prisoners re-offend within two years, costing the criminal justice system £65,000 up to the point of imprisonment and £37,500 a year in prison thereafter. The estimated annual cost of recorded crime committed by ex-offenders is £11 billion according to Reducing Re-offending by Ex-Prisoners, Social Exclusion Unit, 2002.

At regional and local levels, LSCs are required to plan the necessary provision to meet the needs of offenders in their locality. In practice the LSC commissions lead providers through a competitive tendering process. Successful bidders were required to show how they would deliver the OLASS provision to offenders and how they would work closely with other commissioned providers in the community. The current OLASS providers by region are:

Region	OLASS Providers
East Midlands	Derbyshire – City College Manchester Leicestershire and Rutland – City College Manchester Lincolnshire – Lincoln College Northamptonshire – City College Manchester Nottinghamshire – West Nottinghamshire College
East of England	Cross regional Information Advice and Guidance – Tribal Bedfordshire, Luton and Cambridgeshire – A4e Essex and Hertfordshire – Milton Keynes College Norfolk and Suffolk – A4e
London	Cross regional Information Advice and Guidance – London Advice Partnership North East Area – City and Islington College South Area – Lewisham College West Area – Kensington and Chelsea College
North East	Northumbria – Newcastle College Tees Valley – Stockton Adult Education Co Durham – Newcastle College
North West	Cumbria – A4e Lancashire – Lancaster and Morecambe College Cheshire – City College Manchester Manchester – City College Manchester Merseyside – Mercia Partnership
South East	Kent and Medway – A4e Hampshire and the Isle of Wight – Isle of Wight College Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire – Milton Keynes College Surrey and Sussex – Nescot Offenders aged under 18 years – CfBT
South West	Unit 1 – Tribal Unit 2 – Strode College Unit 3 – A4e Unit 5 – Norton Radstock College
Yorkshire and the Humber	Local prisons – City College Manchester Other prisons – City College Manchester
West Midlands	Cross regional IAG – Fern Training and Development East Sector – Derby College West Sector South Group Prisons – City College Manchester West Sector North Group Prisons – City College Manchester

The second largest of these providers of education services is Strode College, which has been doing this work for more than 25 years. When the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) took over responsibility for offender learning through the OLASS Directorate Strode College was awarded contracts from 1 August 2005 to deliver Skills for Life, ICT and vocational courses in all 13 prisons in the south west of England. The College employs over 300 full and part time qualified teachers in the prisons and delivers 160,000 teaching hours per year. All the education courses that are provided in the prisons are externally accredited by awarding bodies. In 2004/2005 over 10,700 accreditations were achieved by prisoners at levels between basic literacy and numeracy up to degree level.

The current contract for all prison education work expires in July 2009 so in February 2008 the LSC invited tenders from providers who can deliver innovative approaches to the integrated service, which include the following the key elements:

• Information, advice and guidance
• Assessment of learner needs
• Skills for Life (literacy, numeracy and language, including ESOL)
• Information and communication skills
• Work-related learning
• Prescribed education for young people and young adult offenders
• Personal and social development
• Distance learning, resource based learning and e-learning
• Preparation for release, resettlement, employment and further learning.

Strode College, like other providers, will have to bid for this work if they wish to continue supporting learners in prisons.