Providing a Beacon of hope for prison students

Jul 18 2007 by Bill Gleeson, Liverpool Daily Post

Bill Gleeson talks to Mercia Partnership founder ANDREW TAYLOR

PRISON overcrowding might be a headache for the Home Office, but, for one Merseyside business, rising numbers of inmates is a sure sign of a growing market.

Adult learning company Mercia Partnership was set up nine years ago by former college lecturer Andrew Taylor.

Today, Mercia’s annual turnover is £5.2m, with teaching literacy, numeracy and IT to prisoners at HMP Liverpool forming a large proportion of that income. The figure compares to sales of £3.4m a year earlier, reflecting a pace of growth that Mr Taylor describes as “scary”.

He says sales received a major boost a few years ago after Mercia received a favourable inspection report from Ofsted.

“There are five parts to the report. We were given three grade 1s and two grade 2s.They was the best grades for any training company in the North West and third best in the country as a whole,” said Taylor.

“The Ofsted report was a very public statement that we deliver high quality stuff.

“But the real secret is to do a decent job and give your customers what they want.”

Mercia teaches basic skills in literacy, numeracy and IT to adults. The standards achieved are equivalent to grades A to G at GCSE.

“We focus on Level 1 and Level 2, which is equivalent to GCSE, and colleges teach beyond that,” explains Taylor.

Another sure sign that there is a big market out there for basic learning are the official government statistics which show that 54% of adults in the UK are either illiterate or innumerate or both.

As well as prisoners, Mercia’s adult learning services are used by large companies and by community groups. Its courses are either paid for by funding from the Learning and Skills Council’s Train to Gain programme, Learn Direct or from company training budgets.

“Offender work has really grown strongly in the last couple of years.

“We are just about to start at another prison in Maghull.

“We deliver our offender service in prisons and at probation centres. We are known as the lead provider for offender work in Merseyside,” said Taylor.

The company employs 140 staff who will deliver courses to about 850 prisoners each day once HMP Kennet, in Maghull, is up and running. Around 1,500 prisoners a year complete the courses.

Taylor said: “There is a big correlation between having a job and re-offending. Our work is to get people job-ready so they can get and keep a job once released.

“It’s about the basic skills. Take IT. If you have been inside for 10 years, you will need to understand the world of IT will be completely different now. We have 100 computers in Liverpool Prison this year.”

Taylor says the receptiveness of prisoners to the training on offer varies.

He said: “Some are totally committed. They see it as a way to a new future.

“Others, who might for example be de-toxing, struggle to learn for anything more than a short period of time.

“A lot of people have had a poor experience of learning at school and our job is to show it can be very different.”

Prior to setting up Mercia, Taylor was a lecturer at Wirral Metropolitan College where he taught management training.

When shopping channel QVC and outsourcing firm Vertex set up in Knowsley during the 1990s, he observed that they were not recruiting staff from the immediate area, principally because too few local people possessed the basic skills necessary.

Local people would be offered IT courses, but their word processing documents would be full of red squiggles showing that they were poor at spelling or unable to write cell formulae.

“So as well as the IT skills, we discovered people needed the literacy and numeracy training as well,” said Taylor. “We are good at what we do, but that’s because we focus on only a few things,” he added.

With corporate clients, the company doesn’t charge until the student has passed a test.

“We have about a 90% success rate. It’s extraordinarily high. But we don’t teach people to suck eggs.

“We assess them first and find out what they do and don’t know. They may be good at spelling, but weak at grammar, so we will teach them grammar.

“That means they are able to take their tests quicker. Companies like that,” he said.

The firm tailors its training towards the work being carried out by staff.

So if they have forms to fill out as part of their job, those same forms will be used as part of the course.

As for the future, Mercia is spurning the traditional route for training company expansion of opening branches in more locations.

Instead, the plan is to grow through e-learning. Mercia has spent £300,000 developing a software programme in conjunction with Wavertree- based Mando Group that offers online adult numeracy. BusinessLink contributed £100,000 to the pot, with the rest of the cash coming from Mercia’s own resources.

“If there is any sort of problem we can answer it by email or by telephone support or we will go out and see them,” explains Taylor.

“The finishing touches are being put to the software this week and the task now is to get it out to the market,” said Taylor.

According to Taylor, e-learning sites have not been all that attractive in the past.

“It often looks like somebody has put a textbook online. It’s only recently that it has improved and our system is not like that at all.

“Online literacy will be next and then languages for people who are new to the country.

“We are trying to follow the market. Ultimately, online learning will be successful but I’m not sure it’s in the right format at the moment,” he said.

Mercia has recently won Beacon status, which means that Taylor has been tasked with the job of sharing the secrets of his success.

“I don’t mind sharing my knowledge. It’s about innovation and it’s about culture. The culture at Mercia is we will go the extra mile to assist our clients,” said Taylor.

billgleeson@dailypost.co.uk

Q&A

Born: Blackburn

Age: 48

Family: Wife and two children

Degree: BA Economics from the University of York and MSc in Marketing from the Salford University

Best advice received: “Find out what the customer wants and give it to them” learned from Taylor’s post-graduate studies.

Unfulfilled ambition: To become a really good sailor

Greatest achievement: Building this business and employing 180 local staff