Too often, incarceration leads to more incarceration - the reoffending rate for adult prisoners is 42 per cent.

This leads to a cycle of crime in offenders and costs the taxpayer £15 billion a year. Education in prison, however, cuts this rate by 7.5 percentage points.

The 2016 government-commissioned Coates Review also found that prison education improves employment opportunities, community safety and prisoners’ wellbeing.

This last factor goes beyond employment or even reoffending, stretching to improved self-confidence and mental health.

The problem is that the Coates Review also found that prison education was inadequate.

A situation getting worse, not better

Six years later and the story is unchanged, and often worse. Ofsted found that two-thirds of prisons had poor-quality education, skills and work management, and just nine of 32 institutions were judged to be of a high standard (compared with eight out of 10 community further education providers).

Prisoners themselves are falling off: between 2011 and 2018, there was a 90 per cent drop in prisoners taking level 3 courses (AS level or above).

Something desperately needs to change.

So, the Commons Education Select Committee, which I chair, has been looking into adult prison education for the last 18 months.

We found some deeply worrying deficiencies that the government should remedy as fast as possible.

The need to assess

The first, and most important, recommendation is that prisoners need educational assessments. The available data shows that 30 per cent of prisoners have a learning difficulty, but evidence shows this is an underestimate.

The current system is inconsistent, incomplete and relies heavily on self-declaration, so the true scale of learning challenges in prisons is unknown.

But 40 per cent of prisoners have been permanently excluded from school and 57 per cent have English and maths proficiency below the level of 11-year-olds.

Most prisoners do not come from a stable educational foundation and it’s counterproductive to act as if they have.

Education that isn’t at the right level or doesn’t provide the right support is likely to deter prisoners from life-improving learning.

That’s why our new report urges the government to implement a consistent system in which every offender receives an assessment for learning needs from an educational psychologist.

This new assessment system is a key element in what the report recommends should be a wholesale overhaul of prison culture to sufficiently prioritise education.

The inquiry heard that education improves employment prospects, making prisoners less likely to reoffend.

The positive impact of learning

However, a number of charities and unions were keen to stress another point: that learning has value in itself. 

Witnesses told the committee that education improved prisoner wellbeing, prison culture and behaviour. Learning can transform our prisons if given the right priority.

That’s why the government should further promote learning in prisons, pay prisoners the same rate for education as unskilled work, and, most importantly, ensure each prison has a deputy governor of learning who is directly responsible for the educational outcomes of offenders.

While education has its own value, for many prisoners it is their ticket to a new, more stable life on the outside. Currently, just 17 per cent of prisoners are in stable employment a year out of prison.

Thankfully, the government has taken some key steps to strengthen the link between prisoners and employers.

The government’s education White Paper proposals to establish employment advisers and local employment boards are welcome, and we look forward to hearing the proposed implementation timeline.

It has also accepted a key recommendation, borne from this inquiry, to extend the Skills & Post-16 Education Act’s apprenticeship scheme to prisoners.

With further incentives, such as tax breaks and targeted funding, this could be a lifeline that helps prisoners reintegrate into society.

Data and digital access

Finally, our inquiry found that digitally speaking, prisoners are being left behind. Prisoners are often moved to different prisons with little notice.

Currently, when this happens, their education record is effectively wiped - there’s often limited communication and scant educational records.

If prisons were to introduce digital passports, detailing specific needs and progress, prisoners would be far less likely to fall off a fractured learning pathway.

It’s also a fact that modern learning requires modern tools.

We wouldn’t expect school or university students to study without access to digital resources, so how can prisoners be expected to receive a competitive standard of education without some of technology’s key learning benefits?

There are legitimate fears about security but, if prisons can ensure that access to online educational resources will be tightly regulated and monitored, then it’s in everyone’s interests to give prisoners the benefits of digital education.

Education can break the cycle of incarceration to incarceration.

Prisons can’t purport to be places of rehabilitation without putting learning, with all the opportunity and self-improvement it entails, at the heart of their mission.

Robert Halfon, Conservative MP for Harlow and a former skills minister, is chair of the Commons Education Select Committee