Steering Committee

Rod Clark

Prisoners' Education Trust

Rod joined PET as its CEO in 2013. Prior to that he built a career in the Civil Service, including a spell as principal private secretary to Alistair Darling MP. He was involved in planning the merger of the National Offender Management Service into the Ministry of Justice, and was Chief Executive of the Civil Service’s internal training organisation, the National School of Government.

Rod sat on the expert panel for Dame Sally Coates’ review of prison education and also sits on the Reducing Reoffending Third Sector Advisory Group (RR3).

Nnamdi Efobi

Sector Expert

Nnamdi is a Sector Expert

Chris Emmett

Weston College

Chris Emmett is a Director of Strategy – Offender Learning at Weston College

Gareth Evans

Sector Expert

Gareth is a Sector Expert

Professor Jane Hurry

Centre for Education in the Criminal Justice System, UCL Institute of Education

Jane is a Professor of the Psychology of Education at The Centre for Education in the Criminal Justice System, UCL Institute of Education

Jess Mullen

Clinks

Jess is Head of Policy at Clinks

Maria McNicholl

St Giles Trust

Maria McNicholl, BA, PGCE, MA is Development Manager at St Giles Trust.

She has been involved in the Prisoner Learning Alliance since its inception because she sees first-hand the powerful and positive change education can make in prisons. She has worked for St Giles Trust developing their prison based projects for 17 years and started their first flagship “Peer Advice Project” at HMP Wandsworth in 2002 training prisoners to NVQ Level 3 in Advice & Guidance and supporting them to provide advice and guidance to their peers. This programme is now delivered in 30 prisons in England and Wales and has been developed in the community to provide opportunities for people with lived experience to work in our sector. She has also contributed to pan-European projects transferring the peer model into different settings such as training peer mentors in the Roma Community in Budapest.

She has a PGCE and MA, with distinction, in prisoner education from the Institute of Education, UCL. Her work with the PLA enables her to be part of the “bigger picture” and contribute to overall strategy and development in prisoner education which is an invaluable opportunity.

Angela Nartey

University and College Union

Angela is Policy Officer at University and College Union

Marie-Claire O’Brien

New Leaf CIC

Marie-Claire is Director of New Leaf CIC

Shaun Williamson

Prison Governors Association

Shaun is Finance Officer at Prison Governors Association