Pan HMPPS Graduate Scheme

Market engagement for new pan Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) externally provided operational fast-track scheme

The Leadership, Talent and Capability team (LTC) within the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) People Group have designed the outline of a new pan HMPPS scheme which will fast-track external candidates who have been educated to degree level into senior operational management roles across prison, probation and Youth Custody Service (YCS). The scheme aims to provide a masters qualification that will develop candidate leadership skills as well as encompassing the operational accreditation required to work across all areas of HMPPS enabling anyone who achieves the masters to move fluidly across a variety of senior operational roles. The qualification will include the Professional Qualification in Probation (PQiP) level 6, Youth Justice level 4 and Prison Officer Entry Level Training (POELT) which will be mapped across to a level 3 Apprenticeship by the start of the first cohort. This unique qualification will be the first time the organisation has brought the separate operational pathways together to create one qualification which covers the whole of HMPPS.

The scheme will begin with a 3-month foundation section where candidates will gain an end to end experience of the offender journey spending time in all areas of HMPPS and the wider Criminal Justice System (CJS). This is an exciting opportunity to provide candidates with a unique breadth of knowledge where they will experience first-hand what it feels like to be in a court transportation vehicle, see the inside of a police custody cell and much more. The candidate will then be placed into one of the three pathways (prison, probation or YCS) however they will still move around placements within all three pathways to give them experience to support their academic learning. The scheme will be a maximum of four years for those on the probation pathway and three years for those on the prison or YCS pathway.

The scheme will consist of a combination of internal and external provision. It is proposed that the marketing/part recruitment and qualification elements of the scheme will be outsourced to external providers, or one provider who successfully competes for both.