The North West led in the number of cases taken for the Home Office’s de-radicalisation scheme last year, but there are concerns the counter-terrorism programme is undermining relationships between educational institutions and children, and risks targeting marginalised communities.
The region referred 948 individuals last year, with 94 cases – only 10% of referrals – deemed at risk enough to be adopted onto the Prevent programme.
Last year almost 60% of individuals referred in the North West were under 18, with more than 40% of the region’s referrals being made by educational institutions – historically and nationally this number has been around a third, but has always been the sector that made the most referrals.
Peter Middleman, North West Regional Secretary for the National Education Union, expressed concern around the pressure put on educators to make referrals considering the low percentage of referrals adopted as cases.
He said: “In a way, you could say that the system is doing its job and weeding out the referrals.
“But that will have meant counter-terrorism police knocking on somebody’s front door and possibly interviewing people under caution and on the basis of an instant mistake.”
He explained that some referrals were made as a result of linguistic errors, one child mistaking the word ‘terraced’ for ‘terrorist’ when describing the house they lived in.
Because of this the union stressed the importance of taking considerable professional judgement when referring someone, and while that seemed to err on the side of caution there was a real danger in exposing children and families to a host of different experiences and intrusions.
Middleman explained the NEU understood the need for a multi-agency approach to counter the risk of terrorism, but that the pressure put on educators by the government and the cutting of resources like teaching assistants was damaging relationships between schools, young people and the wider community.
“Teachers and educators generally rely on establishing a rapport both with the young people in their classes, but also with parents, carers and the wider community.
“Schools are places where young people should be allowed to explore ideas and feelings.
“It is clearly placing an unfair expectation on a discrete part of our public service when teachers are effectively being asked to be the eyes and ears of the intelligence services when their first priority is to help young people grapple with interpreting that world and finding their place in it.”
The Prevent programme was brought in under the Counter Terrorism and Security Act in 2015, although versions of it have existed and developed since 2003 as a response to 9/11, 7/7 and the rise of home-grown terrorism.
It placed a legal responsibility on schools, nurseries, universities, healthcare providers and the social care sector to have ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’.
The Home Office’s Prevent objectives are to tackle ideological causes of terrorism, intervene early to support people susceptible to radicalisation, and enable people who have already engaged in terrorism to disengage and rehabilitate.
Each year, roughly 7000 referrals are made to the Prevent programme for an ‘initial assessment’.
Referrals are made under 11 categories to determine the risk.
Four are specific ideological risks – ‘Islamist’, ‘extreme right wing’, ‘incel’ and ‘school massacre’ – and the North West were in the top two regions in referrals made for all of these categories last year.
The seven more general categories are ‘other’, ‘conflicted’, ‘unspecified’, ‘no specific extremism issue’, ‘high counter-terrorism (CT) risk but no ideology present’, ‘no risk, vulnerability or ideology present’, and ‘vulnerability present but no ideology or CT risk’.
Where counter-terrorism police assess a radicalisation risk, a ‘Channel panel’ will meet to discuss the referral, and then decide whether the individual should be adopted as a ‘Channel case’ – and enrolled onto the de-radicalisation programme.
Since the introduction of ‘vulnerability present but no ideology or CT risk’, it has become the most selected category for Prevent referrals.
Despite a consistent number in referrals being made under ‘extreme right wing’ and the largest number of referrals made under ‘vulnerabilities present’, the Home Office still prioritises ‘Islamist’ as the main threat to national security, despite numbers falling significantly in referrals since 2017/18.
An independent review of the Prevent programme, the Shawcross report, published at the end of 2023, stated that Islamist extremism remained the primary threat to terrorism in the UK and that there should be more focus on tackling this.
The report also stated that individuals – the majority of which are children – at risk of radicalisation should be treated as ‘susceptible’ rather than ‘vulnerable’.
This review drew criticism from the NEU as well as human-rights organisations Amnesty International and Prevent Watch – an NGO dedicated to addressing harms caused by the Prevent strategy.
Speaking to Mancunian Matters, John Holmwood, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Nottingham, and advisor for Prevent Watch, shared concerns that the programme encouraged targeting marginalised communities.
Holmwood said: “Most of the things that trigger a referral to Prevent associated with Islam – the things that the training tells you to look for are a change of dress.
“It might start by wearing religious clothes, or taking up a new interest in religion.
“But of course, these are all things that young people do as part of finding themselves in the process of being at school, engaging with friends and developing their sense of self.”
He also highlighted that children with special educational needs and difficulties were being unfairly targeted, with one case of an autistic child being referred to the school by a peer, and then by the school to Prevent, because of off-hand comments made.
He said: “There were behavioural issues with the child associated with the child’s autism.
“But then that makes it difficult to address the issues of autism and behaviour between the parents and the child, because you’ve already already created that difference.”
Manchester’s local authority wing that oversees Prevent here have been approached for comment.
