Prisons in Preston and Blackpool: this is what Ofsted thought of the education and training provided at Kirkham Prison

Ofsted inspects services providing education and skills for learners of all ages, and this includes prisons such as HMP Kirkham, a Category D (open prison) on Freckleton Road, which was inspected on November 14-16 2022.

From January 2012 to February 2020, prisons were only inspected by Ofsted as part of a His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) inspection, with the findings being published on the HMIP website. However from February 2020, Ofsted can carry out an inspection without HMIP and their findings are published on the Ofsted website.

HMP’s most recent Ofsted report was published on December 22, and before that, the last reports were published in September 2010 and June 2005.

What did Ofsted say was particularly good about HMP Kirkham?

Reasonable progress had been made by leaders in ensuring “that work activities develop prisoners’ employability skills and are suitably challenging and purposeful, ensuring that prisoners improve their English and mathematics skills in vocational lessons and prison industries.”

Ofsted noted that “Leaders and managers appropriately prioritise the development of employability skills for prisoners who transition from closed prisons to the open-prison environment in preparation for their release”, such as work attendance, punctuality, reliability, teamwork and communication skills.

In addition, leaders provide prisoners with additional qualifications and productive work to make them more employable, whilst just under a third of prisoners benefit from Release on Temporary Licence work opportunities.

Ofsted also said reasonabe progress had been made to “ensure that teaching staff provide feedback to prisoners which enables them to build on what they do well and address their mistakes more effectively.”

The report stated: “Teachers in education and vocational training use a helpful system that supports prisoners to focus on the areas that they need to develop. Furthermore, they readily praise prisoners when they make progress and produce work of a high standard.”

Particularly in vocational training, “the feedback given by teachers supports the prisoners to achieve professional standards in readiness for employment on release.”

What does HMP Kirham need to improve on according to Ofsted??

Ofsted said leaders and managers at HMP Kirkham had made insufficient progress in regard to “improv[ing] the accuracy and reliability of their evaluation of the teaching and learning, so that they maintain a good standard of quality of education”, because whilst their evaluation had improved, “they have not focused on assuring the quality of teaching and learning within the substantial areas of training delivered by prison staff.”

Although leaders have recently introduced more rigorous quality and support mechanisms to check teaching and learning, improvements were only namely identified in English and mathematics functional skills, where staff received targeted support and “prisoners attending education now benefit from a better experience”.

Instead, Ofsted wrote “in contrast, quality assurance of teaching, learning and assessment for industries and land-based work is still being developed.” Managers in these areas use only verbal feedback from staff and prisoners to assess the quality of teaching, whilst “very few workshop and land-based instructors, have had their training sessions observed, as part of the quality assurance process” and so leaders have “not ensured that staff have received training related to improving their teaching, learning and assessment practice.”