Education referrals to Prevent are up 16% year-on-year but disturbing cases of students being persecuted for legitimate protest or making flippant remarks raise fears that discrimination, prejudice and racism have infected the government’s anti-terrorism strategy, says Peter Radford
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When I first heard a colleague at Amnesty International mention that the charity was launching a campaign to call on the government to scrap the Prevent Duty my response was: Why?

For those of us working in schools the Prevent duty forms part of our regular safeguarding updates. In that regard, it is presented and understood as “common sense” guidance to help prevent vulnerable young people from being drawn into extremist groups and developing extreme ideas which could pose a future threat.

What could possibly be wrong with that? I had never given it a second thought.

So I was shocked to discover that in reality, far from being safeguarded by the duty, many often-vulnerable young people are being unfairly discriminated against and viewed with suspicion and fear simply because of their race, religion, or neuro-diversity.

This is the thought police – a 97-page report published by Amnesty International last year – details some alarming consequences of the Prevent strategy, especially for Muslims, children, and neuro-divergent individuals.

The report is full of disturbing cases. Zain, aged 14 and struggling with his mental health, commented to a friend during a fire drill at his school in North England that he “hoped the school burned down”. Another student misreported this to a teacher and Zain was referred to Prevent. His name is now in the system as a potential terrorist threat with no knowledge of who this information has been shared with and no means to clear his name.

How many students have ever made similar flippant remarks? I know I did when I was at school – and maybe even at particularly low moments as a teacher (please don’t refer me, it was only a passing thought).

Would the referral have been made if Zain had not been a brown Muslim boy? Would the referral have been made if media reporting of acts of terrorism, the refugee crisis, and Brexit had not stirred up quite so much anti-muslim, xenophobic sentiment?

Fear of “outsiders” is not new. In fact you could argue that it is natural. The brain triggers an “away response” when we encounter difference. This unconscious, affinity bias is universal even if it is irrational. However when such bias becomes legitimised by law, we have a problem.

In advising teachers to “trust their instincts” and “gut feeling” when deciding whether to refer, Prevent not only legitimises bias, it goes further and makes it a legal duty to act on it.

In Zain’s case the referral was not taken further by police but the school defended its referral on the grounds that “we would always err on the side of caution”.

Zain and his family now feel afraid to make jokes or share opinions in public. They have a sense that they are always being watched and judged. In society as a whole we have age-old examples of how stereotypes and media fear-mongering perpetuate “othering” and reinforce fragmentation and distrust in society.

How much are we as teachers and support staff complicit in this “othering” when we unwittingly fulfil our Prevent duty?

This default to “if in doubt refer” with regard to safeguarding is an understandable good practice. Following some high-profile cases where abuse and neglect have gone unreported and unchecked, many of us as teachers and school staff have been left petrified of not having the appropriate paper-trail – proof that we acted promptly and responsibly – and fearful that any issue not handled in the strictest possible way leaves us open to accusations of negligence or facing legal action.

“Covering your own back” has become the default. However, when fear drives our behaviour we become most susceptible to defaulting to our “lizard brain” and our unconscious biases come to the fore.

But it is not just students who are at risk. Another case cited in Amnesty’s report relates to Irfan, 30, a Muslim teacher who was referred to Prevent seemingly because he complained about Islamophobic abuse by his line manager: taunted about his beard and called a “terrorist”.

He was given no reason for the referral but was subsequently visited twice by police and questioned at length. He has since been stopped randomly by police and questioned in relation to Prevent. Irfan received no documentation from the police and was never informed about the referral’s outcome. He has left teaching as a result.

The latest Home Office figures published in December show that in the year to March 2023, 6,817 referrals were made to Prevent, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%. The rise has been driven in part by schools and universities, which saw a 16% increase in referrals. In fact, education is responsible for 39% of all Prevent referrals (2,684 in the year to March 2023).

Broken down by age, 2,203 of all referrals were for 15 to 20-year-olds, while those aged under-14 accounted for a staggering 2,119 of all referrals (31%).

This issue has become all the more pressing since the Israel/Hamas conflict, which has elicited very strong feelings on both sides. However the repercussions for healthy debate and education are concerning.

Students in schools displaying pro-Palestinian sentiment are finding debate being shut down. The very real threat of referral to Prevent and ensuing interrogation by anti-terrorism police is deeply concerning.

Amnesty reported in December on the story of a student in Yorkshire who was visited in her home by police after posting a tweet expressing solidarity with Palestine (Amnesty, 2023b).

In another case, a student was reported to Prevent for attending a protest and writing a letter to a teacher explaining why. He felt he was targeted for being Muslim as his school had allowed and celebrated other displays of political expression, such as support for Ukraine (see Archer, 2024).

As Dr Layla Aitlhadj, the director of Prevent Watch, has said that young people “should be able to develop their ideas and have them discussed and challenged in an environment that supports them”.

When we perpetuate a culture of fear, we undermine free speech as well as good quality teaching and learning. We also lose the opportunities to educate through conversations about the effects of behaviour and language and through dialoguing with people of different persuasions than our own.

The issue here is not whether certain beliefs or expressions are offensive – students use offensive and inappropriate language all the time – it is the knee-jerk response to refer to Prevent and therefore label such expression in terms of terrorism. These situations could be fantastic educational opportunities, but many are sadly being missed.

Navigating the line between offensive language and freedom of speech is something that the whole of society is grappling with – now more than ever.

Schools must lead the way in taking an equitable approach to all discriminatory language and behaviour, not joining in with state-licensed mass discrimination against the few.

  • Peter Radford, founder of Beyond This, is a former teacher and school leader. He now delivers student workshops and staff training on a range of RSHE and Careers issues including all aspects of equality, diversity, and inclusion. Find his previous articles for SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/peter-radford/

 

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