What the Prevent duty means for schools and colleges in England: An analysis of educationalists’ experiences

In July 2015, a legal duty came into force requiring that ‘specified authorities’, including schools and further education colleges (‘colleges’), show ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’ – popularly referred to as the ‘Prevent duty’. This was a significant change to the Prevent strand of the overall counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST, because it placed specific legal responsibility on schools and colleges to play an important role within attempts to prevent extremism and terrorism. Guidance issued to schools and colleges by the UK government asserted that this duty should be understood within the framework of existing responsibilities to ‘safeguard’ young and vulnerable people from harm. Schools and colleges are also required to build resilience against extremism amongst their students by promoting ‘fundamental British values’ within their curriculum content and their school/college operations.
Since the Prevent duty was put before Parliament, it has been the focus of extensive and often highly polarised public debate. While the UK government has argued that the duty ‘doesn’t and shouldn’t stop schools from discussing controversial issues’, critics of the duty have maintained that it will have, and is having, a ‘chilling effect’ on free speech on schools and colleges. In addition, while the UK government has insisted that Prevent and the Prevent duty relate to all forms of extremism, critics argue that, whatever the intention of individual policymakers, practitioners and professionals, Prevent and the Prevent duty continue in practice to concentrate overwhelmingly on Muslim communities, thereby exacerbating stigmatisation of Muslim students. This concern has been heightened through highprofile media coverage of controversial Prevent referrals of individual Muslim students.
These debates made clear an urgent requirement for a stronger evidence base from which to understand and assess how the Prevent duty is playing out, both in schools and colleges and in the context of other ‘specified authorities’. The research presented in this report begins to respond to this requirement. Focusing on the experiences and attitudes of school and college staff, it examines 4 questions:
1. How has the new Prevent duty been interpreted by staff in schools and colleges in England?
2. How confident do school/college staff feel with regards to implementing the Prevent duty?
3. What impacts, if any, do school/college staff think the Prevent duty has had on their school or college, and on their interactions with students and parents?
4. To what extent, if at all, have school/college staff opposed or questioned the legitimacy of the Prevent duty?