Half of inmates have a reading age or 11 or below. The Ministry of Justice says the Shannon Trust programme will help change that - and cut reoffending

A pioneering prison literacy scheme, which began with correspondence between a Sussex farmer and a life sentence prisoner, is to be officially delivered across the penal estate after ministers recognised its potential to change prisoner lives and cut re-offending.

The charity, Shannon Trust, was started in 1997 after farmer Christopher Morgan, published a book containing letters between him and Tom Shannon, a life sentence prisoner. Morgan had been shocked to learn of the low levels of literacy in the prison population and devoted the royalties from the book, Invisible Crying Tree to setting up peer mentoring reading schemes in prisons.

The trust's first "prisoners-teaching-prisoners" to read programme began in Wandsworth prison in 2001, facilitated by prison officer Neil Lodge. It proved a success and, within 18 months, was operating in 30 jails. The trust's peer teaching approach is now running in 150 jails. At least 10,000 prisoners have been taught to read through the programme.

It is estimated almost half of the prison population has a reading age at, or below, that of a child of 11. Talking about the Shannon reading plan last year, Nick Hardwick, chief inspector of prisons, said:

At a time when politicians and policy makers are looking to break the cycle of re-offending, here is something we know works.

The trust will now deliver the programme in every public sector prison in England and Wales, after being appointed as a business partner by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS).

Prisons minister Jeremy Wright, who last week announced the partnership at Wandsworth jail, said the reading scheme would be rolled out across every public prison in England and Wales and, wherever a prisoner goes, access to the scheme will follow. He said the ability to read can change lives and believes new found literacy will have an impact on re-offending. He had particular praise for the prisoner mentors, who were at the launch, and said he plans to encourage them to take their mentoring skills out into the community.

"John" is a mentor at Wandsworth. He said teaching fellow prisoners to read was the most rewarding thing he had ever done:

I get such a buzz when a learner completes a page for the first time, it is just so exciting.

Until now, the success of the Shannon scheme has depended on the goodwill of individual prison governors and officers. Now, it will become part of the "core day" in every public prison.

David Ahern, the chief executive of Shannon Trust says this will give the trust unprecedented access to many thousands of prisoners who cannot read.

Thousands of literate prisoners would like to use their time in prison positively by teaching other prisoners to read. Our partnership with NOMS gives us the ability to release this potential and make a radical difference to literacy levels across all prisons.