Youth Offending work
Due to the pioneering work of Dave Maguire with young offenders- AchieveAbility worked with NorthAllerton ( Her Majesty's Young Offenders Institution or HMYOI) to set up workshops in the North East of England, where over 98% of young offenders in these prisons had very low literacy skills.
20 young male offenders took part in a series of linked workshops to explore attitudes about themselves, education and rehabilitation. One of the activities required the young people to think about their life histories and experiences of education and share their feelings with others in the group.
All of the workshop participants said they had never had the opportunity to explore and explain their own identities.‘ This is fantastic; no one has ever taken the interest and I have never had the opportunity to talk about myself in this way’. The workshops engaged the offenders in an original way to help them reframe their ideas about education and training and also to encourage them to think about education and training as part of their rehabilitation. Very few had regularly attended school beyond 13.
A small number of the participants had come into the criminal justice system through anti-social or illegal acts, often to do with either violence or drugs. Only a few had either sat or experienced the final year of GCSEs and many had negative feelings about school. During writing activities in the workshops, nearly all the participants showed distinct signs of SpLD but none of them had been previously identified with learning disabilities, either at school or in prison and none had been given specialist support.
Skills assessments showed all of the participants to have a range of strong intellectual abilities, intuitive thinking and a high level of critical appraisal of evidence. About two thirds of the young offenders became sufficiently motivated to start looking for courses to study in higher education through the workshops. However, their biggest fear about returning to education once outside prison was rejection because of their prior educational attainment, rejection by their peers if their history of offending was to become known, and rejection by teachers who might want to exclude them from a class.
There is evidence that as much as 60% of the prison population have a Specific Learning Difference (SpLD) such as dyslexia, dyscalculia or dyspraxia. Research has shown that the incidence of dyslexia increased with the severity of an offence. Studies have also revealed that schools were not making the association between frustration in the classroom by a pupil leading to behavioural problems and these being linked to learning difficulties, thereby raising the likelihood that the pupils might not be in employment, education or training(NEET) after leaving school.
The AchieveAbility Network has a set of resources that can be used by staff and students interested in SpLD. They can be found on the web site www.achieveability.org.uk or by contacting the AchieveAbility office by email at achieveabilityn@gmail.com.
20 young male offenders took part in a series of linked workshops to explore attitudes about themselves, education and rehabilitation. One of the activities required the young people to think about their life histories and experiences of education and share their feelings with others in the group.
All of the workshop participants said they had never had the opportunity to explore and explain their own identities.‘ This is fantastic; no one has ever taken the interest and I have never had the opportunity to talk about myself in this way’. The workshops engaged the offenders in an original way to help them reframe their ideas about education and training and also to encourage them to think about education and training as part of their rehabilitation. Very few had regularly attended school beyond 13.
A small number of the participants had come into the criminal justice system through anti-social or illegal acts, often to do with either violence or drugs. Only a few had either sat or experienced the final year of GCSEs and many had negative feelings about school. During writing activities in the workshops, nearly all the participants showed distinct signs of SpLD but none of them had been previously identified with learning disabilities, either at school or in prison and none had been given specialist support.
Skills assessments showed all of the participants to have a range of strong intellectual abilities, intuitive thinking and a high level of critical appraisal of evidence. About two thirds of the young offenders became sufficiently motivated to start looking for courses to study in higher education through the workshops. However, their biggest fear about returning to education once outside prison was rejection because of their prior educational attainment, rejection by their peers if their history of offending was to become known, and rejection by teachers who might want to exclude them from a class.
There is evidence that as much as 60% of the prison population have a Specific Learning Difference (SpLD) such as dyslexia, dyscalculia or dyspraxia. Research has shown that the incidence of dyslexia increased with the severity of an offence. Studies have also revealed that schools were not making the association between frustration in the classroom by a pupil leading to behavioural problems and these being linked to learning difficulties, thereby raising the likelihood that the pupils might not be in employment, education or training(NEET) after leaving school.
The AchieveAbility Network has a set of resources that can be used by staff and students interested in SpLD. They can be found on the web site www.achieveability.org.uk or by contacting the AchieveAbility office by email at achieveabilityn@gmail.com.