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Prevent
What is the Prevent strategy?
Prevent is a government strategy designed to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorist or extremist causes. The Prevent strategy covers all types of terrorism and extremism, including the extreme right wing, violent Islamist groups and other causes.
How does the Prevent strategy apply to schools?
From July 2015 all schools (as well as other organisations) have a duty to safeguard children from radicalisation and extremism. This means we have a responsibility to protect children from extremist and violent views the same way we protect them from drugs or gang violence. Importantly, we can provide a safe place for pupils to discuss these issues, so they better understand how to protect themselves.
The statutory guidance refers to the importance of Prevent awareness training to equip staff to identify children at risk of being drawn into terrorism and to challenge extremist views.The Home Office has developed a core training product for this purpose. All our staff complete this training. We have a dedicated Prevent Governor, and all governors are informed termly of any Prevent concerns or incidents.
What does this mean in practice?
At St Peter’s, we build our children’s resilience to radicalisation by promoting fundamental British Values and enabling our pupils to challenge extremist views. We explicitly teach British Values to support this alongside many other things we already do in our school to help children become positive, happy members of society also contribute to the Prevent strategy.
These include:
· Exploring other cultures and religions and promoting diversity and tolerance through various subjects in our curriculum and the texts we read.
· Challenging prejudices and racist comments.
· Developing critical thinking skills and a strong, positive self-identity.
· Promoting the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils, as well as British values such as democracy.
We will also protect children from the risk of radicalisation, by using filters on the internet to make sure they can’t access extremist and terrorist material, or by vetting visitors who come into school to work with pupils. We will carry out our Prevent duty in different ways, depending on the age of the children and the needs of our community.