- Home
- Information
- Safeguarding
- Preventing Radicalisation and Extremism
Preventing Radicalisation and Extremism
Preventing Radicalisation and Extremism at KPS
The overall aim of the Government counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST, 3 is to reduce the risk from terrorism to the UK, its citizens and interests overseas, so that people can go about their lives freely and with confidence.
PREVENT remains one of the key pillars of CONTEST, alongside the other three ‘P’ work strands:
• PREVENT: to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism
• PURSUE: to stop terrorist attacks
• PROTECT: to strengthen our protection against a terrorist attack
• PREPARE: to mitigate the impact of a terrorist attack
What do we mean by PREVENT?
The aim of Prevent is to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. Prevent also extends to supporting the rehabilitation and disengagement of those already involved in terrorism.
How does the Prevent strategy apply to KPS?
The Prevent duty requires specified authorities such as education, health, local authorities, police and criminal justice us as a school to help prevent the risk of people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. It sits alongside long-established safeguarding duties on us to protect people from a range of other harms, such as substance abuse, involvement in gangs, and physical and sexual exploitation. The duty helps to ensure that people who are susceptible to radicalisation are supported as they would be under safeguarding processes.
What does this mean in practice?
Many of the things we already do in 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
- 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 which are part of our core values.
- We will also protect children from the risk of radicalisation, for example 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.
As a school we also risk assess our susceptibility for radicalisation on a regular basis. This takes in to account the following areas:
- What national risks are we aware of that and how could these risks impact our area, setting, pupils or families? For example, online radicalisation
- What specific local risks are we aware of that could impact our area, setting, pupils or families? E.g. local extremist activity (groups active in the area)
- Leadership and Partnership – how do we ensure that we are working collaboratively and effectively to prevent risk.
- Staff training – is this relevant and effective for needs.
- How are we sharing information?
- Building children’s resilience to radicalisation
- How do our polices and practice support us in our aims
- How are we risk assessing visitors to our school.
Isn’t my child too young to learn about extremism?
This work and strategy is not just about discussing extremism itself, which may not be appropriate for younger children. It is also about teaching children values such as tolerance and mutual respect. We will make sure any discussions are suitable for the age and maturity of the children involved.
Is extremism really a risk in our area?
Extremism can take many forms, including political, religious and misogynistic extremism. Some of these may be a bigger threat in our area than others. We will give children the skills to protect them from any extremist views they may encounter, now or later in their lives. As part of our Risk Assessment work we will identify local and national risks. These may differ from year to year.
What we will do
If school staff have a concern about a pupil, they will follow the school's normal safeguarding procedure, reporting on CPOMS and including a discussion with the Designated Safeguarding Lead (Mrs Watson). Where deemed necessary the relevant member of the safeguarding team will contact the Front Door who will consider a possible referral to the Channel Programme through the local Channel arrangements (programme to provide support at an early stage to people who are identified as being vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism).
Other agencies who will support a school's concerns include the Police (999 or 101, non-emergency number) and the DfE has a dedicated helpline on 020 7340 7264.
