A Tutor’s Experience

Picture the scene – I am lying on the floor of a prison gym, grappling with a burly prison officer in an effort to escape his clutches. How did I get there? No, I had not turned to a life of crime following retirement. Instead, I was doing the personal safety element of the training to join the team of literacy and numeracy volunteers at my local Young Offender Institution (YOI).

What do we do, and why?

The facts….

• The Taylor Report on the Youth Justice System and the government response identified 86% of young men in YOIs in 2015/16 as having been excluded (either temporarily or permanently) from school and 45% as having special educational needs (source: Youth Justice Board).
• There is a proven correlation between illiteracy, innumeracy and offending. Research shows that prisoners who gain employment after release are far less likely to reoffend.
• ‘My’ YOI houses approximately 500 male offenders aged between 15 and 21, a significant proportion of whom have literacy and numeracy weaknesses. Our aim is to help these young people improve their skills and so improve their chances of getting a job post-release. We commit one morning or afternoon a week, and work one-to-one with a young man on whatever they decide is their most immediate requirement – this can be reading, spelling and punctuation, comprehension skills and/or maths. We can also help with writing letters or filling in forms.

What do young men/our students get out of it?

It is a lot more – we hope – than acquiring the skills that might help them to get a job when they leave. Getting out of their cells for two hours is a factor, and spending quality ‘one-to-one’ time with an adult who is completely focused on them and their needs, who provides encouragement and support and demonstrates an ongoing commitment (sadly lacking for many of them in their home lives) must bring some benefit. Exposure to something new can trigger a longer-term interest; I have found poetry (if you choose the right poems) can work particularly well with young men who have reached a certain reading level, and I was thrilled recently when a student asked me to get an anthology out of the prison library for him to read on his own. We always try to inject a bit of fun – fierce battles of Connect 4 between student and tutor (my skill there is certainly improving) feature in many sessions.

What do the tutors get out of it?

A mixture of enjoyment, amusement and frustration in about equal measure, but most importantly a feeling of making a difference in the lives of young men who, notwithstanding whatever it is that they have done that has brought them into the YOI, are experiencing a very difficult period in their lives – away from home and family and trying to cope with the prison regime.

The enjoyment and amusement all come from our dealings with our students. The pleasure you get when you see a young man master something (eg long division) that he has struggled with for years, and his glee when he gets a sum right and you get it wrong (yes, it does happen, my O-Level maths is a bit rusty) is real. The stories they tell you about how they ended up in prison can make you laugh – the young man who told me that he was ‘only’ selling drugs, it was at a music festival (so that was all right then!); his problem was he sold them to an undercover police officer; cue outrage (on his part) and then laughter (on both our parts) at his haplessness. But they can also make you want to weep – the young men with no stable family life, who have dropped out of/been excluded from school, without adults who cared, or were capable, enough, to do something about it on their behalf; the Travellers who have never been to school.

Equally, the frustration often comes not only from ‘the system’ but from the young men – for instance, finding your student has watched TV into the night and cannot be bothered to get up for your session, or him not being available at the last minute for a variety of reasons. But the frustrations are definitely outweighed by the satisfaction of knowing you are doing something worthwhile.

How do we measure our success?

We do not do this in any formal, statistical way as the outcomes are unknown: we do not get feedback on what has happened to a student after he has left the prison, and whether he reoffends (familiar faces do, I am afraid, occasionally reappear on our books!); we are only one amongst many ‘interventions’ in his prison experience that might affect his behaviour post-release. But we can see the growth in self-esteem as young men master a new skill. Prison staff do provide positive feedback on what they think of the sessions and a student’s own wish to continue with VSE (despite the competing attractions of an extra gym visit, or ‘social’ time with fellow inmates) shows that he values the time he spends with us.

Finally ….

There are a surprising number of similarities to remunerated working life – the sense of shared purpose and the effort so many working in different capacities in the prison make to go the extra mile; the camaraderie; the constant banter among the young men and between them and prison staff, and with the tutors; the importance of humour when things are particularly difficult or frustrating; the specialised language that one has to master (‘rotl’, ‘sosh’, ‘basic’, ‘a legal’, ‘an intervention’). Of course there are differences too – not least having to unlock and lock every door or gate you walk through, and occasionally having to get out of the way of a posse of prison officers as they react to an alarm.

While a few tutors are former teachers, we come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. All you need is enthusiasm, common sense and commitment. I can guarantee you will meet some interesting people of a type you may not have come across before – unless you did (unlike me) turn to a life of crime in retirement.