CategoriesEducation Expert View News Our Expert Views

The Trojan Horse Affair and why government’s idea of ‘British Values’ is wrong

Following the Trojan Horse Affair in Birmingham and the collapse of the Department of Education’s attempt to ban teachers under claims that they had an Islamist agenda, the 2015 version of Prevent, the UK government’s counter extremism strategy, included a statutory duty on schools to promote ‘British values’.

Logo for Politics Home news CategoriesNews

The House: The problem with the Prevent strategy

As human rights groups call for an end to the government’s Prevent strategy, what might we see in the Home Office’s long-awaited independent review? Laura Hutchinson, writing for The House – a cross-party publication reporting on Westminster – notes that the most common Prevent referral is under “extreme right wing” radicalisation (46 per cent), followed by concerns about those with a mixed, unstable, or unclear ideology (30 per cent), and Islamist radicalisation (22 per cent). Despite this, “Islamist terrorism”, she says, accounts for the majority of terrorism-related convictions, with 68 per cent of prisoners in custody for terrorism being Muslim. Hutchinson notes that “many Muslim groups raise concerns that Prevent leads to their communities being seen only through a security lens, and could lead to the policing of culturally conservative views or political opinions”. Source: The Problem With Prevent