PRISON teachers are getting high due to prisoners vaping in jails, TUC congress heard on Monday.

University College Union delegate Maxine Looby says she has been “absolutely horrified” by the conditions in prisons.

She told of prisoners using broken chairs as weapons during lessons in cramped windowless rooms belonging to the “Victorian age.”

Racism towards black prison educators is rife, she added. 

“We have educators going home with headaches and high due to the vaping that goes on in prisons,” she said.

Prison Officers Association national vice chairman Dave Todd added: "If prison rehabilitation is to work and have any change of any impact on prisoners then we need to motivate and pay-reward prison educators, to have a good moralised workforce."

Congress moved to press the new Labour government to return prison education to the public sector and develop a decolonised curriculum that speaks to and engages with the majority of prisoners.