These are the sorts of Shawshank Redemption-style stories we see teaching in jails. These are the sorts of stories that may come to an end in the next three months, thanks to our Premier Mike Baird's decision to make nearly all professionally qualified correctional teachers in NSW redundant. All on the say so of consultants KPMG and corrections minister David Elliott. We are to be replaced by inexperienced, underqualified "trainers", furnished by a yet-unnamed private provider.

I've always joked that the music industry is the only one in which it can be good to have a criminal record. It's so difficult for guys like Jay – bright, hard-working but hamstrung by their poverty, abuse-stricken upbringing, deeds done out of desperation or just off-their chops amokness – to come out of the big house, find work, support and readjust to a society so different to the one they'd left years before.

Jay came barging into my class because he loved music and because he was trying to get out of the yard, some "gangstas" were after him. Six months later he was writing his own songs. He often told me his school horror stories, which meant he had minimal literacy. I tentatively suggested he try literacy classes to help his lyrical flow.

I introduced him to our literacy teacher, a UNSW literacy professor. She took him under her wing and soon he was writing poetry and cathartic stories about his life. He joined art and IT classes, eventually designing a cover for a CD he recorded in our makeshift studio and sold it in our Boomgate Gallery, making enough to keep him and his mates in cheap tobacco every "Buy-Up".

Jay was one of the lucky ones. I've had students who were bashed to death, or who gave up and topped themselves or who ended up in psych wards. I've taught Bra boys and barristers. I've had many students, particularly Koori, who went on to study music, production, sound mixing and recording at TAFE and other institutions post release. Some have formed bands or became roadies. The self-esteem they gained from involvement in education is incalculable.