Nobody except the Minister thinks that secure colleges are a good idea—no educationist, no one who works in young offenders institutions, no one who works in the criminal justice system and no one who campaigns for improvements in the way that we treat children and young people in the justice system.
We do know that the vast majority of young people who end up in the criminal justice system have very poor literacy, numeracy and linguistic skills. The statistics show that 86% of offenders in young offenders institutions have been excluded from school. I maintain that the majority of those young people will have special educational needs because of physical or mental disabilities or emotional difficulties, whether or not those needs have been previously identified. Such children need to be educated in small groups and to do a wide range of activities. Simply sitting them at a desk and expecting them to learn does not work, and it has never worked for them.
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I used to be the governor of a secondary school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, a number of whom were already in and out of the criminal justice system or at risk of being in it. There was a maximum of eight children per class, with a teacher and at least one or more teaching assistant. They tried never to have more than 40 children in the school at any one time, with the others undertaking practical work, outdoor education or other specialist activities. It was recognised that simply trying to push knowledge into them did not work, and that many of them learned better by doing.
Why does the Minister think that trying to educate 320 young people together, often hundreds of miles away from home, will work? As others have said, the average length of time in custody is 79 days. Therefore, after 79 days those young people will be returned to their homes, and either return to their schools or have to find a new placement, facing the terrible difficulty of transition to a new school, and with the difficulty of having come from custody compounding their problems. The Minister expects them to be miles away from their families and other support services. How on earth will they have successful integration back to their home environment? How will they receive the support they need to ensure they stay out of custody?
In many other places we have seen that success happens in small units where young people can be treated as individuals and educated on how they should be able to take their rightful place in the world. Please will the Minister look at other systems where young people are treated in custody, and please will he not go ahead with
this bizarre notion of a secure college? It is not going to work; please do not carry out this experiment at the cost of our young people in the criminal justice system.