To the teacher who has been told to make a Prevent referral: you have more room than you think
When it comes to making a Prevent referral, teachers can lean on several laws to push back against what can often feel like a compulsory measure, writes Dr Layla Aitlhadj. In June, Prevent Watch published an Educators’ Resource with Amnesty International UK and Liberty called Safeguarding not Securitisation[1] because teachers kept asking us the same questions and their schools’ guidance did not answer them. This article draws on it to set out what the Prevent duty does and does not ask of you, why your training points you towards over-referral, and what a referral does to the child on the other end of it. The duty is on the school, not on you The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 places the Prevent duty on institutions. It is the school or the college, as a body, that must have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into […]
