The Prevent Duty is statutory guidance designed to help prevent people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. It’s a comprehensive document that addresses the important role played by multiple authorities, including the education sector.
This article covers the responsibilities assigned to schools and colleges by Prevent, and explains the critical function digital safeguarding tools play in protecting students from extremist influences and ideologies.
Understanding education’s role in the Prevent Duty
The Prevent Duty was published as part of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act in 2015. The guidance applies to 5 specified sectors: local authorities, healthcare, police, criminal justice agencies, and education. Its stated aims are to:
- Tackle the ideological causes of terrorism
- Intervene early to support people susceptible to radicalisation
- Enable people who have already engaged in terrorism to disengage and rehabilitate
Schools and colleges play a significant role in helping the Government achieve this - in fact, the education sector provides the highest number of Prevent referrals of all the authorities involved. Between April 2023 and March 2024, education accounted for 40% of all referrals.
This is partly down to the fact that young people, due to their brains not being fully developed, are particularly susceptible to harmful influences and ideologies. In addition, teachers, with their safeguarding knowledge and frequent close contact with children, are uniquely positioned to be able to identify early warning signs of radicalisation.
Part of a wider safeguarding approach
The Government makes it clear that Prevent should be adopted as part of an education setting’s wider safeguarding approach - not a separate set of procedures, “therefore these considerations should be incorporated into existing policies and risk assessments.” (P.163)
This should be fairly straightforward, as the route to radicalisation often involves safeguarding risks that education settings address through established policies and procedures. For example, exposure to harmful material and grooming.
What does Prevent require of DSLs?
Schools and colleges are directed to appoint a member of staff to be the Prevent Lead, which is often the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL). The Prevent Lead must ensure that all staff have the knowledge and training they require to fulfil the institution’s Prevent responsibilities. DSLs, given the wider remit of their role, require more frequent Prevent training, which they can access for free via the Home Office.
Prevention
As with most safeguarding risks, the best way to reduce instances of radicalisation is to prevent it from happening in the first place. For schools and colleges, this means establishing safe environments, both physical and digital, where students can thrive, free from harmful influences.
As part of this, Prevent instructs settings to “have measures in place to prevent their facilities being exploited by radicalisers. This includes seeking to ensure that any event spaces or IT equipment are not being used to facilitate the spread of extremist narratives.” (P.175)
Education itself plays a key part in prevention, in the sense that students can be taught skills such as resilience and critical thinking. These attributes can empower young people to question dangerous narratives, should exposure to them occur.
Identification
When a potential radicalising incident happens despite preventative measures being in place, early detection can help DSLs address the issue before it has time to escalate. To achieve this, there should be systems in place enabling visibility, so that staff can quickly identify vulnerable students or concerning behaviours. Furthermore, all staff members and parents should know the procedures and channels through which to share information that could be relevant to such cases.
Nurturing an open, non-judgement environment where young people feel able to discuss sensitive issues can encourage students themselves to report potential issues related to radicalisation.
A DSL’s deep knowledge of students’ safeguarding history puts them in a strong position to identify and monitor individuals who may be particularly susceptible to radicalisation. As Prevent explains: “A person’s vulnerabilities may be relevant to their susceptibility to radicalisation and to the early intervention approach that is required to divert them away from radicalisation.” (P.37)
Support and referrals
When students at risk of radicalisation are identified, schools and colleges should provide them with targeted support. In some minor cases, settings may have the capacity and resources to deal with the incident without having to make an official Prevent referral. The guidance on referrals confirms that “DSLs should exercise their professional judgment about whether a referral is proportionate and appropriate, as they do for all other safeguarding risks.”
In other cases, education settings should complete the referral process and, if applicable, report incidents to the police, social services, or other relevant authority. For example, if a student is thought to have actively engaged in terrorist-related activity, the police should be informed.
When devising policies or sharing information as part of their Prevent duties, the guidance reminds education settings to take into account data protection legislation, the Equality Act 2010, and political impartiality requirements. For further and higher education settings, freedom of speech and academic freedom protections are also relevant.
Digital solutions are essential for compliance with Prevent
The Prevent Duty highlights the significant role the internet plays in radicalisation:
“The internet has become the ‘preferred’ avenue for those searching for terrorist propaganda or contacts. The internet continues to make it simpler for individuals and groups to promote and to consume radicalising content.” (P.29)
As a result, it is imperative for schools and colleges to have solutions in place to safeguard digital spaces. Web filters, digital monitoring systems and wellbeing platforms are integral to education settings and their efforts to prevent, identify and support their students through terrorist-related risks.
Web filtering
Web filters manage access to online content. Schools and colleges are required to have filtering in place to protect students from inappropriate or harmful internet material.
In the context of Prevent, web filters are preventative, in the sense that they protect students from being exposed to potentially radicalising material or influences. They enable education settings to comply with the Prevent guidance around “limiting the use of permissive online environments or other platforms, which can contribute to radicalisation by facilitating exposure to terrorist and extremist content, and enabling networking with like-minded people.” (P.83)
Real-time, content-aware web filters enable schools and colleges to achieve this in a targeted, controlled way that minimises disruption to learning. Furthermore, they ensure that there is no delay between extremist content going live, and the filter blocking it.
Digital monitoring
Digital monitoring systems detect potential risks in digital activities by monitoring users’ keystrokes and creating an alert when harmful keywords are identified. They enable DSLs to identify risks early, thus reducing the chances of them missing a vulnerable child.
Prevent directs schools to be alert to both violent and non-violent extremism, “including certain divisive or intolerant narratives which can reasonably be linked to terrorism.” (P.141) It also describes how “a concerning number of children under the age of 18, [are] committing offences by downloading and disseminating terrorist materials.” (P.29) Digital monitoring can help education settings address both of these issues.
If students are creating or promoting intolerant narratives or terrorist materials, these can be quickly identified. When risk-related keywords are detected, some monitoring systems will take a screenshot, providing DSLs with a contextual understanding of the event. Alerts can range from low level to high level, in some cases allowing DSLs to build a clear picture of an individual’s safeguarding history, with valuable evidence to share with inspectors or authorities, if required.
Human-moderated digital monitoring ensures that all medium and high level alerts are reviewed by a team of trained moderators. This minimises false positives and means that DSLs can focus on genuine alerts that require their attention. If threats to health or life are identified, they will be notified immediately by phone.
Wellbeing platforms
As DSLs know, indicators of radicalisation aren’t limited to digital spaces. Prevent requires education settings to identify “signs that extremist views are being adopted, including changes in behaviour that might signal a concern.” (P.41) Wellbeing platforms provide a way for schools and colleges to identify changes in wellbeing, which may accompany or even precede such changes in behaviour.
The platform Pulse, for example, encourages students to complete 60-second weekly check-ins about their mental health and wellbeing. The resulting data provides schools and colleges with an up-to-date snapshot of wellbeing levels at a school, class and individual level. They can also dive further into the data to discover specific issues, such as sense of identity, that are causing changes in wellbeing.
The platform also gives students the option to request help from an appointed staff member. This provides a simple, confidential mechanism through which students can access support from an adult they trust. Students may use this to raise concerns about radicalising influences impacting them or their classmates.
Schools and colleges are key players in limiting the impact of terrorist ideologies, and this is reflected in their responsibilities according to the Prevent Duty.
For further guidance on preventing radicalisation in young people, education settings can refer to the Act Early resource.
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- 4 Ways Real-Time Filtering Helps Schools Meet & Exceed DfE Guidelines
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- DSL Insights: Your Complete Guide to Human-Moderated Digital Monitoring
