General Education qualification

[Duncandonut]

Hi all,

Am on my biggest prison to date (A mere 200 prisoners) and am having major issues with people getting the General Education Qualification. No one seems interested in taking it. I thought it may well be due to prisoners feeling suppressed, but out of the 200 I have only 4 who are feeling suppressed. I did read somewhere that I need different sized classrooms for the Foundation Qualification (Max of 20 school desks) and I need a max of 10 for the General Qualification. So I built 2 classrooms of different sizes and set the smaller one to only do the General qualification. Again no one is interested. Is this a bug ? I have tried to reschedule numerous times, I have demolished one classroom. I even went so far as to give everyone a lot of free time and 3 large meals a day. All to no avail.

It is the same with the Carpentry course as well. Out of 200 I only have 2 people interested and both somehow managed to fail the course (I could understand if they were plumbers ). How does one make people want to learn ? Can the dev's perhaps tweak a few settings so that maybe a few more people actually want to learn. I have a grant sat waiting for 5 people to do the General Education Qualification and at the moment I don't actually ever see me completing it.

[xlr8films]

I'm having the same problem. I even went in and manually changed the schedule. It got more people into the workshop but not into class. My inmates seem to gravitate to Spritual Guidance and Alcohol and Pharm above all other options. I'm considering stripping the Spiritual away entirely.

[MMZ>Torak]

I've had similar results on prison sizes all the way up to 600 cells. Multiple classrooms (one 20 seat classroom per security classification), multiple workshops (yes I know that there is currently an issue with there being only one foreman and having multiple class sessions for workshops not working but at least those that can work there do). I'm beginning to wonder if it is because the prisoners that would be inclined to take these "advanced" courses are just getting out of prison before they can finish because they are less inclined to act out or are just lower security problems and don't hang around the prison long enough...

I have always only built 20 seat classrooms and have had people pass the general class so it can't be that they are limited to 10 seat rooms.

[xlr8films]

Nah my main classroom is a 20, im at 101 days with only 40% pass and no one "interested." Im guessing it's cuz there are "easier" things to do.

[RJenkos]

It all relies on how your prison runs. Is it dangerous there? Do a lot of prisoners have critical needs? Are they well fed?

If you run a concentration camp they won't want to take any classes. If you try to satisfy the prisoners needs they will want to take the classes.
I have about 240 prisoners in my current one and I have pretty full classes every day with about 15 coming in and being paroled a day.

[5hifty]

(yes I know that there is currently an issue with there being only one foreman and having multiple class sessions for workshops not working but at least those that can work there do)

Just an FYI, you can get around this limitation by firing all the foremen, pausing the game and then hiring as many as you need. I completely ignore the 'you can only have one of these guys rule' - its a completely unscalable rule. Once prisons get to a certain size its completely unpractical to only have one.

More on topic, General Education and Carpentry classes are completely borked. I've got a prison that I've been playing since alpha 13 - I've had a few thousand prisoners move thought my prison, over 500 finish Foundation Education with 280 pass, over 1000 finish the Workshop course with 500 pass, over 1600 finish the Kitchen course with 600 pass while only having 15 finish the General Education course with 4 passes and 126 finish the Carpentry course with 32 passes. The numbers are a little skewed because I've had a couple of mass releases, riots and all that goes along with having a save that over a year old (that said - never had any problems with updates) but you can see that there is a MAJOR difference between 500 and 15... Granted I've predominately run the prison with a high level of suppression (pretty much required to control 600+ Max Sec prisoners with 100 or so guards), but there have been some decent stretches of time when the majority of my prison was 'well treated'. It just seems that no one ever uses it.

[Threehorns]

Hi all,

Am on my biggest prison to date (A mere 200 prisoners) and am having major issues with people getting the General Education Qualification. No one seems interested in taking it. I thought it may well be due to prisoners feeling suppressed, but out of the 200 I have only 4 who are feeling suppressed. I did read somewhere that I need different sized classrooms for the Foundation Qualification (Max of 20 school desks) and I need a max of 10 for the General Qualification. So I built 2 classrooms of different sizes and set the smaller one to only do the General qualification. Again no one is interested. Is this a bug ? I have tried to reschedule numerous times, I have demolished one classroom. I even went so far as to give everyone a lot of free time and 3 large meals a day. All to no avail.

It is the same with the Carpentry course as well. Out of 200 I only have 2 people interested and both somehow managed to fail the course (I could understand if they were plumbers ). How does one make people want to learn ? Can the dev's perhaps tweak a few settings so that maybe a few more people actually want to learn. I have a grant sat waiting for 5 people to do the General Education Qualification and at the moment I don't actually ever see me completing it.

check your program schedule, make sure the schedule is arranged in a way that things don't obstruct each other.
- library uses people who have passed the foundation ... so the more you have working in the library ... the less likely they'll be taking the general course as well.
as for carpentry, also make sure you have forestry. the logs from the trees are needed.

you could use 3 blocks, 1 for general education, 1 for carpentry, 1 for the rest (addiction control, behaviour etc)

[5hifty]

Yeah I've done everything I could to optimise attendance and those numbers I quoted are the best I could get. It just seems like most prisoners don't go for General and Carpentry classes. I run 6 classes a day - 4 completely packed Foundation classes, and 2 General which MIGHT have someone in it. Same for the Workshop - 2 workshop classes completely packed and 2 carpenter classes that are always empty. As a counter point, in the short time Chaples have been around I've had over 4000 attendances of a spirtiual serman, and again, only 15 people even TRY the general education.

[iNick]

It has tended to become a habit for me (when I remember). The attendance to programs by prisoners aren't updated fast/frequently enough. If at night I click the "reschedule all programs" I'll start seeing more attendance to the programs. Note that the percentage of passers will be adjusted. If the prisoner isn't attending 100%, his chance for passing is reduced also. Having a prisoner in a program is more important to me because it adjusts his grading, whether he passes or not.

I don't think (keep in mind I have NO DOCUMENTED PROOF) that rescheduling classes will be detrimental, but it seems more beneficial than it is detrimental.

[Threehorns]

Yeah I've done everything I could to optimise attendance and those numbers I quoted are the best I could get. It just seems like most prisoners don't go for General and Carpentry classes. I run 6 classes a day - 4 completely packed Foundation classes, and 2 General which MIGHT have someone in it. Same for the Workshop - 2 workshop classes completely packed and 2 carpenter classes that are always empty. As a counter point, in the short time Chaples have been around I've had over 4000 attendances of a spirtiual serman, and again, only 15 people even TRY the general education.

I myself have 2 blocks of 4 hours for work

BLOCK 1
3/4 hours Education + 4/4 hours drug addiction + 2/4 hours behavior + 4/4 hours parole

BLOCK 2
2/4 Workshop Safety training + 2/4 Carpentry + 2/4 alcohol addiction + 2/4 spiritual guidance + 4/4 hours parole

you could also try 7 hours of work:
block 1: 3 hours education + 1/3 drug + 2/3 alcohol
block 2: 4 hours workshop + 2/4 spiritual guidance + 2/4 behavior
parole whenever you like

or:
block 1: 3 hours education + 4 hours workshop
block 2: addictions + guidance + behavior
parole whenever you like

just remember,
library will provide work for those who completed foundation .... those cannot study general education.
carpentry requires forestry for the logs.

[5hifty]

Again, the problem isn't with my scheduling - unless someone come out and says 'I've had 100 people tho foundation edu, with. 50 passes, and 20 people tho general with 10 passes, the numbers are just borked. Prisoners seems to be magnitudes less likely to do General Edu then they are anything else. Remember I've had over 1000 finish the foundation class? The 5 guys who work in the library have nothing to do with it, and of course you need a forestry area for the carpentry to work.

I've spent hours (literal hours) fine tuning schedule, optimising attendances, condensing classes - that still doesn't change that the classroom that previously was over flowing with Foundation Edu students, MIGHT get one guy to show up to General Edu.

[Threehorns]

Only giving you advice since i don't have that problem.

maybe link your save game and I'll have a look at it?
gives me a break from my prison. I did the nutriënt test with 200 max sec prisoners right after a test with the execution chamber ... Just got out of the rut with preventing a rioting prison after my save. So far it worked, with only 2 death. both Janiters .... poor guys.

Make sure to duplicate your save game, so you can keep on playing.

[Amitiel]

I think it's also worth bearing in mind that if you have a prison with mostly min sec prisoners, a lot of them tend to get released before they'll have had the time to go through both the foundation and the general education courses (and if you've only got one course running with prisoners already on it - even if that's just a couple - other prisoners can't join midway. It ends up running for the full 20 sessions provided it's got at least one prisoner on it). Both courses are twenty sessions, so that's 40 in-game days (assuming maximum efficiency). I personally don't bother offering the general course to min sec because of this. Even quite a large proportion of normal sec prisoners won't be around that long.

[5hifty]

Only giving you advice since i don't have that problem.

maybe link your save game and I'll have a look at it?
gives me a break from my prison. I did the nutriënt test with 200 max sec prisoners right after a test with the execution chamber ... Just got out of the rut with preventing a rioting prison after my save. So far it worked, with only 2 death. both Janiters .... poor guys.

Make sure to duplicate your save game, so you can keep on playing.

Nah the save as it currently is isn't likely to have anyone do the course - just completed a $3m renovation and I've yet to fine tune everything to the new layout - still getting riots and the heat is pretty high in the prison. That said, what are your number for the courses? I've been able to have prisons that run 100% completely unattended (let them run over night), with a few hundred max sec inmates, constantly at low threat, next to no suppression, plenty of people going tho the Foundation Classes, and still the numbers for the people who sign up to the General class are incredibly low. I'm talking 1 person for General for every 100 or even 1000 people who take Foundation.

[Threehorns]

I haven't tried to run overnight. I load my save to see how things change with changes I make. from Yard design, to placement of showers, to toilet behavior, programs, regime, i've tried to get a lot of prisoners prisoners to become an CI ... lots of tries. I think i got 40 or so at top... and just used 1 and the same everytime.


No idea how to obtain numbers on completes. I made 3 classrooms, notice that at the beginning the 2 rooms for foundation are filled to max (40) and notice the classroom for general education slowly follows suit (starting with 2 and increased). ... I had about 10 prisoners making beds at the same time with carpentry skill ... that is all i can give about numbers.

edit:
sigh, ofc i know where of find them. just a place i've stopped checking.
succes % on carpentry: 57%, foundation: 33% general education: 44% ... if i recall correctly.