Education plays a vital role in preparing our children and young
people for life in a modern and diverse Britain.
Protecting pupils from the risk of radicalisation forms part of
schools’ wider safeguarding duties, alongside protecting children
from other harms, such as drugs, criminal and sexual
exploitation.
Here’s what you need to know about how we are protecting children
and young people from dangerous ideologies.
Why is there a need for this in schools?
There’s no single way of identifying whether a child, young
person or adult learner is likely to be susceptible to an
extremist ideology or vulnerable to radicalisation. The process
of radicalisation is different for every individual and can take
place over a long period, or it can be very quick.
However, there are things that education settings can do to
counter extreme ideologies and build their students’ resilience
to radicalisation and extremism, such as teaching about extreme right-wing
ideologies, Islamist extremism or
discussing fundamental British
values with students.
Children and young people are vulnerable to radicalisation and
schools have a crucial role in protecting them or if needed,
referring them via the Government’s Prevent programme, which you
can read more about below.
What support do you offer teachers?
In 2016, we launched the Educate Against Hate
website, through which we have provided over 100 free
resources for teachers and school leaders to support the
promotion of these values.
The website provides teachers, school leaders and parents with
the information, guidance and support they need to challenge
radical views and keep children safe, including from online
extremist influences.
We regularly create and add new resources to the site, such as
the interactive learning platform ‘Going Too Far?’ which
teaches young people about staying safe online from
radicalisation and other forms of harm.
We have also issued further practical guidance
for schools, further education providers, higher education
providers and childcare providers to help them understand how to
implement the duty, as well as offering a range of online
training, including the Home Office’s Prevent
e-learning platform
What about keeping children safe from these ideologies
online?
Keeping children safe online is essential.
Our statutory safeguarding guidance ‘Keeping children safe in
education’ (KCSIE) provides schools and
colleges with information on what they should be doing to protect
pupils and students online.
All schools and colleges must have regard to this when carrying
out their duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of
children. This includes insuring that filtering and
monitoring systems are in place and regularly review their
effectiveness to protect children when they are online on
the school or college's IT systems.
The following resources provide guidance for parents and carers
to keep children safe online.
What exactly is Prevent?
Prevent is a government programme that provides early
intervention to divert adults and children who may be susceptible
to any form of extremism or radicalisation.
The aim is to act early by spotting the warning
signs of an individual at risk of being drawn or groomed into
extremist and terrorism ideologies and provide early intervention
and support.
The Prevent duty requires schools (and many other bodies and
institutions, including local authorities, universities and early
years providers) to “have due regard to the need to prevent
people from being drawn into terrorism.”
