Intensive Literacy and Numeracy

The Mission’s innovative literacy and numeracy programme is delivered to prisoners at Otago Corrections Facility. As well classroom teaching, our tutors work alongside learners in their existing prison industry programmes (dairy farming, engineering, carpentry, kitchen, grounds maintenance etc.) and use content from these programmes as a context to teach literacy and numeracy. For example, our tutors might use the names of farming equipment on the prison dairy farm to develop literacy skills, or the process of converting measurements from inches to millimetres in the prison’s engineering workshop to teach numeracy skills. This makes the content of the programme relevant and interesting for the learners, which makes their learning more effective.

Every learner receives 100 hours of high-quality, contextualised learning, to ensure better literacy and numeracy skills, readiness for further industry programmes in prison, and better educational and employment outcomes on release.

Outcomes for Participants:

• Literacy and numeracy gains
• More men starting prison industry programmes due to meeting the required literacy and numeracy levels
• Better achievement rates in prison programmes
• Better employment outcomes on release from prison

Intensive Literacy and Numeracy is funded by the Department of Corrections.