Education Cuts in UK Prisons Are an Assault on Rehabilitation and Public Safety

Education Behind Bars: The First Line of Public Safety

When His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, warned that cuts to prison education “ultimately endanger the public,” he articulated what many of us with lived experience of the system already know too well. Education inside prison is not a peripheral service. It is the thread holding together the possibility of rehabilitation, safety, and meaningful change. To cut it is to surrender to chaos — both inside and outside the prison gates.

The inspectorate’s report revealed that real-terms budget cuts are “eating into already stretched provision,” resulting in declining standards and fewer courses. The consequences are visible: classrooms closed, workshops half-empty, instructors overburdened, and prisoners languishing in their cells for twenty hours a day. These are not statistics; they are people being stripped of hope.

My View from the Inside

During my own time in prison, amongst other jobs I worked as a classroom assistant. Every new prisoner who entered was required to sit their basic skills assessments — the BKSB English and Maths tests. I helped run those sessions daily, twice a day. It was there that I saw the power of education in one of the bleakest environments imaginable.

Many men who sat across from me could barely read or write, some of those men were in tears filled with anxiety and dread because of the reality they were facing with the assessments. Some had been expelled from school before the age of fifteen. Yet within weeks, when given structure, patience, and encouragement, they were reading with pride, calculating with confidence, and rediscovering a sense of worth.

Those sessions, brief as they were, transformed the atmosphere. When a prisoner achieves their first qualification — even something as modest as a Level 1 in English — they walk a little taller. They see themselves not only as offenders but as learners, workers, and fathers. That small spark of identity change is the beginning of rehabilitation.

L1 in English and Maths is the attainment that the prison service wants each prisoner to have by the time they have been released.

When the government cuts these programmes, it extinguishes that spark.

A System Designed to Fail

The data in Charlie Taylor’s report should alarm anyone concerned with public safety. Ninety-four out of 104 closed prisons were rated “poor” or “not sufficiently good” for purposeful activityEducation cuts in prisons ultim…. Attendance averaged just 67%, hindered by lockdowns, understaffing, and sheer disinterest from leadership.

Many prisoners wait weeks to be allocated to a course or workshop — not because they are unmotivated, but because the system lacks capacity. Some are handed irrelevant placements, such as furniture repair or industrial cleaning, with no connection to their post-release prospects. Even when work is available, it often runs for only five hours a day, split between multiple prisoners to make the numbers look better.

This is not rehabilitation. It is bureaucratic survival — and it fails both prisoners and the public.

Reoffending: Britain’s Most Preventable Crisis

Every year, roughly 50% of those leaving prison reoffend within twelve months. Each cycle of reoffending costs the public tens of thousands of pounds in policing, court time, and social services — not to mention the trauma inflicted upon new victims.

We cannot keep treating this as an inevitability. Reoffending is not a random social occurrence; it is a measurable outcome of policy neglect. A prison that releases people without education or skills is manufacturing reoffenders. Conversely, every prisoner who earns qualifications inside is statistically less likely to commit another crime.

Education, therefore, is not merely about personal development — it is crime prevention in its purest form.

Promises and Betrayals

During the 2024 general election, Labour promised to improve “access to learning” for prisoners and to make rehabilitation central to justice reform. Yet, less than a year later, reports reveal that prisons have been forced to cut frontline education budgets by up to 50%. While overall national spending figures may appear stable, the reality inside the system tells another story: rising contract costs, stagnant funding, and collapsing provision.

These cuts contradict Labour’s own manifesto commitments and render its proposed “earned time” regime — where prisoners can reduce sentences through education and training — largely meaningless. How can people earn time off through education when there are no teachers, no classrooms, and no materials?

Without proper funding, rehabilitation becomes a hollow slogan rather than a public duty.

Purposeful Activity: A Right, Not a Reward

The inspectorate’s findings echo what those of us on the ground have long said — that “purposeful activity” is at the heart of prison stability. When prisoners are engaged in work, learning, or training, violence drops, self-harm decreases, and tension eases.

Education gives structure to the day, a reason to get out of bed, and a legitimate sense of progress. Denying it not only breeds frustration but also places enormous strain on officers and healthcare teams. A disengaged prison population is a volatile one.

The best governors understand this. They know that a safe prison is one where individuals are working toward something beyond their sentence. Yet the leadership across much of the system appears indifferent — a point Charlie Taylor made clear when he criticised the “lack of appetite and ambition” within the Prison Service to improve standards.

The Hidden Role of Prison Educators

One of the tragedies of these cuts is the demoralisation of prison educators — a group of professionals who are often the most compassionate and underpaid in the entire justice system. Many of them teach in classrooms with broken computers, outdated materials, and little support.

When we speak of “rehabilitation,” we should remember that it is these individuals who do the heavy lifting. They build trust with people society has written off. They teach resilience as much as reading, empathy as much as arithmetic. Yet their contracts are being squeezed, their workloads doubled, and their roles diminished.

A humane society would not dismantle its most effective line of defence against reoffending. It would empower it.

My Experience of Change Through Learning

I’ve seen what education can do — not in abstract terms, but through human transformation. I watched men who arrived angry, illiterate, and broken begin to take pride in helping others with their writing. Some went on to apply for jobs inside the prison, others started creative writing groups, and a few began mentoring peers.

One student once told me, “It’s the first time anyone’s asked me to use my brain instead of my fists.” That statement captures everything wrong — and everything right — about the current debate.

Education gives people a reason to believe they are capable of more than their crime. Take it away, and you remove the only viable alternative to violence or despair.

A False Economy That Costs Lives

The government often justifies these cuts as necessary “efficiency measures.” Yet this narrative ignores the long-term cost of doing nothing. Reoffending is expensive. So are emergency call-outs, police investigations, trials, and prison recalls.

The average cost of keeping one person in prison for a year now exceeds £48,000. By contrast, the annual cost of delivering full-time education to that same individual is a fraction of that amount. The arithmetic is clear: investing in education pays for itself many times over.

Yet despite this evidence, the political conversation remains trapped in short-termism. It’s cheaper to neglect than to nurture — until the bill comes due in human suffering and social decay.

Leadership and Responsibility

Lord Timpson, the current prisons minister, has acknowledged the “scale of the crisis” and insisted that he wants a system that “reduces reoffending”. His words are encouraging but insufficient. Ministers cannot claim to value rehabilitation while presiding over its erosion.

Policy leadership means making difficult budgetary choices based on evidence, not headlines. It means acknowledging that education is not “soft justice” — it is the most effective form of public protection.

Until the Ministry of Justice treats education as a statutory necessity rather than a discretionary extra, our prisons will remain revolving doors.

A Framework for Real Reform

If Britain is serious about creating a justice system that works, several urgent policy steps must follow:

1. Restore and ring-fence funding for prison education.
   Every prison should have a guaranteed baseline budget for accredited education and vocational training, protected from local cuts.
2. Empower prison educators as key workers.
   Their roles should carry professional status equivalent to teachers in mainstream education, with fair pay and development opportunities.
3. Integrate digital learning safely.
   Modern prisons require secure digital platforms for education — from virtual classrooms to online qualifications. Excluding prisoners from technology only widens the gap upon release.
4. Link education directly to post-release employment.
   Partnerships with employers, trade bodies, and apprenticeships should begin inside the prison walls and continue seamlessly outside.
5. Include lived-experience voices in policy design.
   Those who have experienced imprisonment and education firsthand should help shape future frameworks. Policy built without insight is policy destined to fail.

Education Is Not a Luxury — It Is a Lifeline

When people imagine prison, they often picture bars, locks, and uniforms. But the real battleground for rehabilitation is found in the classroom — in the quiet moments when someone rediscovers the ability to think, learn, and hope.

Every lesson taught inside prison is an act of public protection. Every qualification earned is a potential crime prevented. To cut education is not only an attack on prisoners but on every community that will one day welcome them home.

Prison is not the end of a person’s story; it should be the turning point. Yet that possibility depends entirely on what we choose to offer inside.

A Call to Government: Reinvest in Humanity

The time for half-measures has passed. The government must act decisively to reinstate full funding for prison education, modernise facilities, and ensure that every prisoner — regardless of sentence length — has access to meaningful learning.

Rehabilitation should not be a privilege; it should be the purpose of imprisonment.

I have witnessed the difference that education makes within prison walls. I have seen men who once saw no future become mentors, tutors, and fathers determined to change. The state owes it to them — and to every potential victim — to make that journey possible.

We do not protect the public by neglecting those in custody. We protect it by equipping them to never return.

Everyone should consider this question, how can Britain redefine punishment so that it serves justice without erasing the potential for redemption? Its clear the current system doesn’t work.