The Offender Learning and Skills Service (OLASS)
Every year the Skills Funding Agency invests over £100m delivering education and training in prisons across England and Wales. The service, known as ‘OLASS’, is available to all serving prisoners and offers a range of training opportunities.
As the largest independent provider of education in prisons, we’ve delivered OLASS since
2005, providing over 1.5 million hours of learning and vocational training. We currently employ over 1,000 staff to deliver courses that range from basic literacy to the arts, and offer over 600 different qualifications ranging from a BTEC in Construction and the Built Environment to a GSCE Mathematics and a Diploma in Painting and Decorating.
Since we began, we’ve helped improve the Ofsted grade in ten prisons, with seventeen prisons being rated ’good’. In May 2012, we had a qualification achievement rate in excess of 85% across all prisons, with fifteen prisons exceeding 95% for the academic year.
In January 2012 the Skills Funding Agency conducted an assurance audit, as part of the standard contract compliance procedures that it undertakes with all its providers. We’re pleased to report that this resulted in a 0% error rate across 100% of our OLASS records.
