Prisoners’ Education Trust
Prisoners’ Education Trust (PET) has been running since 1989. It funds people in prisons across England and Wales to study via distance-learning courses. These courses offered are very diverse – currently around 125 courses are offered – many of which are not offered within mainstream education.
Size:
- Expenditure for the year ending 2021 was £1.6m
- In 2022, it funded 1,375 people in prison to take distance learning courses.
- PET provided advice, guidance and information to learners and potential learners 3,619 times during 2022.
- Personnel: PET has 21 staff members and 13 trustees.
Age: Founded in 1989
Charity number: 1084718
Courses can be vocational (such as business start-up, personal fitness and plumbing theory), academic (such as GCSEs, A levels, diplomas, and university first year modules) and for personal and social development (such as in languages or creative writing).
In addition, PET also provides advice, information and guidance to current and potential learners.
Why the Good Giving List recommends PET
Several evaluations by the Ministry of Justice Data Lab have found that PET’s work reduces the 12-month re-offending rate, and improves the rate of employment after release from prison.
All of PET’s work is focused on providing access to distance learning courses – in prisons across England, Wales, the Chanel Islands and the Isle of Man.
Impressively, participants and alumni (people who did PET courses while in prison) are involved at all levels of PET, from designing services to serving on the board. PET consults with people still in prison e.g. through focus groups and surveys, and also with alumni – whom it pays for this work. It uses that input to improve its services, to shape strategy and to co-develop projects. PET also has three alumni on its Board of Trustees.
Prisoners’ Education Trust’s work
PET funds distance learning courses to anyone in prison over the age of 18 with at least level 2 English.
PET also provides advice to people in prison to help them find a course suitable for their current educational attainment, and what they hope to achieve (e.g. an industry-recognised qualification if the goal is employment).
Applications are considered monthly and funding is awarded to people making the strongest case.
PET has been happy to support prisoners on a journey of educational progression, and therefore some people are funded on many occasions.
In prisons, distance-learning requires an endorsement from the prison’s education staff.
Courses vary in length. A course typically takes several months and PET generally does not fund a course if the individual is within six months of their earliest release date (as experience suggests that learners struggle to continue self-directed learning immediately after release due to the other pressing demands on them at that time).
Find out how PET uses donations
All of PET’s work is about providing access to courses for people in prison and supporting them to study.
The government supports this work without competition: HM Prison and Probation Service currently funds ~30% of PET’s business, such as funding Open University access courses.
Government does not require competition for this revenue stream because no other provider matches what PET offers, so PET receives this funding as a direct grant.
Currently around 60% of PET’s funding comes from trusts, and 10% from individuals, although PET is working to increase this funding.
At present, demand for courses outstrips PET’s ability to fund them, so additional funds would enable more learners to take courses. Any funding that PET receives is used to fund people in prison to access courses, to provide and improve information and guidance for learners (to increase engagement rates), and to widen the range of courses and support on offer.
PET does not run courses itself: rather, it purchases courses from specialist providers, such as the Open University, the London Teacher Training College, and The Writers Bureau (full list here).
Other information
Evidence and strategy
- PET has been evaluated through the Ministry of Justice Data Lab on four occasions, 2013, 2015, 2018 and 2021. All four evaluations found that the programme reduced the one-year reoffending rate. (A fifth evaluation is planned for 2023.)
- The Justice Data Lab 2021 evaluation of PET demonstrated that participating in PET’s programme not only reduced the one-year reoffending rate, but also: increased the likelihood of people gaining employment in the year after prison; decreased the likelihood of reoffending if employed; and reduced the reoffending rate for those who studied via a PET grant but were not employed in the year following release.
- PET uses the Justice Data Lab for evaluation. For charities working in prisons, it is normally impossible for them to set up experiments (e.g., randomised controlled trials) to assess their evidence, and also impossible for them to get data on any kind of comparison group of people in prison who did not get their intervention; this is the problem that the Justice Data Lab was set up to solve.
- PET’s work is based on a theory of change that suggests people in prison often have poor educational outcomes, and therefore find it harder to find employment on release. RAND Corporation (an international research organisation) conducted a review of studies, and found that those receiving education in prison (in the USA) had better outcomes on release, and a greater likelihood of moving away from a life of crime. Research such as this has helped to shape PET’s offer.
All photos credited to the charity