Corrections welcomes signing of joint education agreement
For immediate release 26 May 2017
Corrections Chief Executive Ray Smith has welcomed the Tertiary Education Commission’s (TEC) re-commitment to work with
his department providing access to quality education for prisoners and helping reduce re-offending.
Corrections and TEC have signed a two year extension to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) originally agreed between
the two organisations in 2014, indicating the success of the relationship so far and an opportunity to build on those
foundations.
“The two organisations have mutual objectives around education and training in prisons provided by tertiary education
organisations. This agreement ensures services provided are of a high quality, lead to nationally recognised
qualifications, and align to labour market needs,” said Mr Smith.
TEC will provide almost $8 million dollars in education funding this year, while, in addition, Corrections funds
approximately $3 million (1,300 places) in intensive literacy and numeracy programmes and approximately $1.5 million
(4,600 programmes) in industry and vocational training.
Qualifications are provided in areas such as foundation skills, NCEA, primary industries, building and construction and
Māori studies.
“Educational achievement is important in enabling prisoners to fully participate and benefit from employment,
rehabilitation and reintegration programmes.”
“The majority of prisoners have limited education or work experience. A high percentage of prisoners have no formal
qualifications and less than half of them were in paid work before going to prison.”
“Raising the skill levels of prisoners not only helps their chances of finding sustainable employment on release, but
more importantly makes prisoners less likely to re-offend, which in turn helps to keep our communities safe,” said Mr
Smith.
This MOU will run until the end of 2018 and will continue to strengthen the joint focus on gaining qualifications and
provide a framework for ongoing collaboration between the two organisations.
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