The FORINER project, connecting EU foreign inmates to their national education centres in order to provide them quality, low threshold education, has taken steps to develop the network and start the project implementation phase.
The project has been collecting pilot projects around Europe during the year.
The pilot project partners met in October to facilitate collaboration. The conference supported the formation of a cross-border network between individuals and organisations in order to exchange educational material across Europe.
Before January 2017, FORINER will ensure formation of numerous pilot projects. Six of the most representative pilots will then be selected and evaluated based on a formalised assessment criteria, providing a basis for the FORINER project’s subsequent milestones.
A diverse network
To realise the pilots, 39 pilot partners were found from 19 different European countries. The pilot partners are prison schools, prisons, national prison services,ducation providers and ICT companies. The pilot projects can be made out of any combination of these partners. For example, a Belgian education provider can send a course in Dutch to a Belgian prisoner in an Italian prison. Or a Polish prison school can send a course in Polish to a Polish prisoner in a Norwegian prison.
From January until June 2017, the aim is to have at least 50 foreign national prisoners study a distance course. The course should be provided by a school or institution from the country of origin of the prisoner, in his or her home language.
Collecting and comparing best practices
The FORINER pilots will be monitored and evaluated. Based on the conclusions of this evaluation, the FORINER partners will be able to determine good practices. The different pilot partners will each use a different approach for the pilot, based on their own expertise and capacity.
The approaches that work will be selected and further examined. In the end, it will lead to general conclusions on how to best provide distance education to foreign national prisoners in Europe.
More information
- The FORINER conference report and presentations
- The project website.
Text: FORINERPhotos: FORINER