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Probation Officers: Training

Volume 462: debated on Wednesday 11 July 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what estimate he has made of the numbers of people in training as probation officers in each probation service region in each year since 1997; and at what cost per student. (148435)

A breakdown of the number of people in training as probation officers and the cost per student is contained in the following tables. Cost information is only available from 2003-04 onwards, when the Home Office took over responsibility for the higher education contracts. It is not possible to provide the information by region.

Trainee Probation Officer figure and costs

Trainee Probation Officer

1997

1998

229

1999

523

2000

564

2001

1,096

2002

1,566

2003

1,818

2004

1,774

2005

1,387

2006

1,134

Notes:

All figures are given as full time equivalent (FTE), and are rounded up to the nearest full employee.

All figures are taken as at 31 December of the relevant year.

Figures from 1997 to 2002 are taken from the RDS Probation Statistics, while those for 2003-04 onwards are lifted from the quarterly workforce information report produced by PACU (formerly NPD).

Financial year

Cost per student

2003-04

34,517

2004-05

35,367

2005-06

36,167

2006-07

36,227

Note:

The new trainee allowance is based upon the trainee base allowance, but adjusted in line with each Board’s labour cost factor and pension cost factor. For 2006-07 only, a further pension adjustment was made to the allowance. The figures also include the average university administration cost per year.