Prisons IT instructors gather at Birmingham City University for conference
Oct 28 2009 by Jon Griffin, Birmingham Post
A major conference for IT instructors from prisons across the UK was hosted by Birmingham City University.
The instructors are regularly trained by the University’s Cisco Academy Training Centre (CATC) to teach prisoners practical computer network skills, to equip them for re-entering society.
Teaching staff attached to prisons from Kent to Lancashire attend week-long courses at Birmingham City University’s CATC, to learn how to deliver training in valuable IT skills to inmates prior to their release.
A long-standing shortage of employees with ICT (Information and Communication Technology) skills in business encouraged the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) to establish the Prisons ICT Academies (PICTA) project, in partnership with IT giant Cisco Systems, in 2004.
Since then dozens of professional instructors from 30 UK prisons have been trained in Birmingham City University’s CATC at its Faculty of Technology Engineering and the Environment, to teach inmates computer networking skills.
Birmingham City University is one of Cisco’s key international training centres. Over five years the PICTA scheme’s success has seen the programme steadily expand to include more institutions and enable professional prison instructors to undertake courses, not only in computer networking, but also in wider IT skills and cabling.
Justice secretary Jack Straw recently launched an even more advanced Cisco partnership at HMP Wandsworth, which saw prisoners learning to install voice and data cabling.
He endorsed the whole PICTA activity, saying: “It is intended to provide enhanced vocational training to prisoners in order to help offenders turn away from crime, and give them back a sense of stability, discipline and responsibility.”
Birmingham City University’s 2009 PICTA conference at its Millennium Point campus saw delegates introduced to a forthcoming new syllabus for the widely recognised European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) 3-level qualification.
