Home > News > June 2005 > 06-Jun-2005

LSC completes first phase of offender learning procurement

The Learning and Skills Council has announced the completion of its initial procurement exercise to select lead providers for the new Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service.

The exercise, which was conducted for the pilot regions of the North East, North West and South West, attracted interest from a range of organisations. Successful bidders are now engaged in post-tender negotiations in advance of the start of the new service in the pilot areas from August 2005.

The LSC says the aim of the new Offenders’ Learning and Skills service is to ensure that offenders in both prisons and supervised in the community should have access to learning and skills development to enable them to hold down a job and play a positive role in society.

By boosting skill levels, the aim is to enhance the employment prospects of offenders, increasing their chance of securing employment and reducing the risk of them re-offending.

Jon Gamble, Director of Adult Learning at the LSC said: "The new service aims to bring together the disparate good practice that has existed for some years in pockets across the country and create an integrated programme of offender learning with real continuity throughout England, something that is essential as offenders seldom serve their entire sentence in one institution.

"A number of high quality responses were received to the tender process. In deciding which to select, we focused on identifying those which were most able to demonstrate their ability to provide learning programmes for offenders of comparable content and quality to those provided to learners in more mainstream centres.

"We are confident that the procurement process has successfully identified those providers and that the service available in the pilot regions from August 2005 will be an improvement on that currently available.”

Welcoming the announcement, Skills Minister Phil Hope said: "Today's announcement represents a significant step towards a more coherent service from providers for the delivery of learning and skills for offenders. A new joined-up approach in three development regions will support disadvantaged learners both in custody and in the community from this August.

"Our earlier introduction of a Head of Learning and Skills into each prison, together with the commitment shown by the network of existing providers over the last few years means that with the LSC also engaged in planning and funding of offender learning we are steadily driving the process of improvement forward."

The Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service will be in place nationally from August 2006 and the process of selecting lead providers in the remaining regions in England will be undertaken during 2005 and 2006.

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