How education can unlock the door to a new life for prisoners

After leaving school, he secured a good job and gradually began to work his way up the corporate ladder. He soon owned his own house, a top of the range car and on Christmas and birthdays his own two children were spoilt with expensive presents. To outsiders, it seemed like Steven had it all.

However, when one of his associates was arrested in possession of a firearm and needed an alibi, without a second's thought for his own family, Steven stepped forward.

"I seemed like I was incredibly successful, but looking back my life was a failure," he says. "I loved my two children, but failed to spend any real quality time with them and although my partner and I shared the roof, we lived separate lives. The decision to provide a false alibi changed my life forever." Steven pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and was sentenced to four years in prison

"My mother always said that health and happiness are two things money cannot buy; I now realise freedom is another," he says.

"For the first month I stared at the cell door willing it to open. I was surrounded by people who had spent half their lives in and out of prison. Many of them were on drugs and all had a look of fear in their eyes. It wasn't fear about their current predicament, but fear about what the future might hold. It did not take me long to realise that I would need a plan mentally to survive."

Steven applied to the Prisoners' Education Trust, an organisation which was set up in 1989 by David Burton and Vernon Cocking after both had become disillusioned with the narrow range of classes on offer to prisoners. The trust makes 2,000 awards each year and offers distance learning courses on everything from astronomy to business studies and horticulture.

Having initially enrolled on an Open University social sciences course, Steven's thirst for education was reawakened. He has since completed his prison sentence and is currently on target to achieve a first class degree in psychology.

"Education really gives you the possibility of a new life," he says. "I have lot of work to do, but now I have hope. Hope I can rebuild my life not in the same mould as my old one, but one that provides for my

family on all levels.

"I'm no longer chasing unrealistic dreams and go to bed satisfied that while I have made mistakes, I am now on course to make amends."

While Steven is one of the Prisoners' Education Trust's success stories, many inmates leave their cells with little hope for life on the outside. Figures show half of all men and up to 70 per cent of women in prison have no qualifications. Two-thirds have literacy levels below those expected of an 11-year-old.

The Government yesterday launched a review of prison education programmes in the hope of improving inmates' chances of gaining job skills while behind bars.

The review, due to report in the autumn, will assess existing courses to see whether they offer value for money and shed some light on how to make the system better reflect skills gaps in the economy.

"In this country, crime costs us around 60bn a year: a truly staggering figure," says Skills Minister John Hayes. "And we know that over 9bn of that is the result of reoffending. This is clearly wrong and we need to focus on protecting the public from the costs and effects of crime.

"With effective and relevant courses, ex-offenders will be better able to find work and so be less of a concern to the wider community and more of an asset to the economy.

"The last thing society needs is people reverting to crime because they are, or feel they are, capable of nothing better. That is not good for society and it is not good for the offender.

"But we must have value for money. The review I am undertaking will look at current courses and where they can be better tailored to social needs. Effective education is, and always will be, key to reform of the justice system."