§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what his latest assessment is of progress on the PSA target to improve literacy and numeracy skills of prisoners discharged from their sentence. [47216]
§ Beverley Hughes[holding answer 10 April 2002]: Our most recent data suggest that there will be a shortfall on meeting our Service Delivery Agreement target to achieve 18,000 basic skills qualifications in 2001–02 by around 10 per cent. Nevertheless, this is still a major increase over the 12,500 basic skills qualifications achieved by prisoners in the previous year, and all of the qualifications achieved in 2001–02 will be at Level 2.