The training programme was commissioned by the Prison Authorities and the project was entirely designed and developed by INSUP (Bordeaux/France). It is co-financed by the Aquitaine Region and the Ministry of Justice.

The principal objective of this training course was to give to prisoners a new trade in hands and to offer them an opportunity to access to a qualification in house painting and decorating. And because the trainers rely on official French standards, the learning is formal. But after debate, we wanted to detect how the prisoners would evolve in front of these same aims but with different ways to reach them: individual competences or abilities, willingness to spend time with prisoners with others type of delinquency, behaviour face to trainers’ commandment. So we considered that it would be interesting to watch that and why finally this micro project is related to informal learning. In the end, the results in term of qualification were really good (94%) but evaluation on the same topics were so different from a person to another.

The programme’s trainees are a group of prisoners condemned by the French legal system and serving sentences of up to 3 years. The prison authority selects the trainees who, after INSUP’s approval, receive house painter training with the possibility of obtaining:

1. A certificate from the Ministry of Employment
2. A work placement on their release from prison or on day release, for example.