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We work to tackle human rights breaches as a result of Prevent in education, including in schools and tertiary institutes. Here you’ll find cases, our expert views and resources that could protect you and your children.

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Picture of a teenage boy in article on what a prevent referral does to a child CategoriesLatest Expert Views Community Expert View Education Expert View Health Expert View Our Expert Views

What a Prevent referral actually does to a child

From the trauma of being questioned alone with no adults present to worsening mental health, a Prevent referral can be devastating to a child even when it is deemed unwarranted, writes Zara W. Tahir.  Just over half (53% according to the latest statistics) of all Prevent referrals target children, but what does it mean to a child to be referred to Prevent? Most notably, it means that under the Prevent duty, “children have been interrogated by counter-terrorism officers without the protections that are afforded to those who are suspected of a crime”.[1] This has been done without a parent’s knowledge or consent, as in the case with this 12-year-old girl, whose parents got a call from the school saying a police officer had interrogated their child at school, leaving them panicked and confused. “Imagine the amount of fear, stress and frustration you go through when as a parent you receive […]

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The Elephant and the Rider: Why the Prevent strategy’s shifting treatment of ideology proves it is ineffective and harmful

The Prevent strategy’s theory that once held that ideology drives terrorism, now no longer describes the people it targets. This means Prevent has not evolved – rather, it has undone itself, writes Zara W. Tahir. Throughout history, the image of ‘the rider and the horse’ has been used as an aphorism for the relationship between emotions (the horse) and the intellect (the rider). Jonathan Haidt reconceptualizes this image as ‘the rider and the elephant’. Haidt explains in his book, ‘The Righteous Mind’, that when presented with a choice to make, we would like to think that we tally the pros and cons and then make our decision. But in reality, we have an emotional or intuitive response to the choice, and we create a narrative as a rational post-hoc justification for the decision we have already intuitively accepted. Thus, instead of the rational rider controlling the unruly intuitive horses, the […]

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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 […]

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Back to School: What has changed when it comes to Prevent in schools

The rules around your child changed this year. Here are three things linked to Prevent in schools that you need to know, writes Dr Layla Aitlhadj. If your child started school or a new year this September, you would have been given the usual things: a uniform list, a safeguarding leaflet, perhaps a form asking you to agree to the school’s online policy. What you will not have been told is that over the past twelve months the rules that decide when a school treats a child as a possible danger have changed. Each of those changes widens the reach of Prevent in schools or the life of the record it creates, and not one of them gives you any new right to be told when it happens to your child. At Prevent Watch we support people affected by Prevent, part of the government’s counter-terrorism programme. Most of the children […]

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UN racial discrimination committee grades UK progress on Prevent ‘unsatisfactory’

Two years ago, on 23 August 2024, the UN’s racial discrimination committee urged the UK to suspend the Prevent duty. Civil society organisations and independent experts had been saying for a decade that Prevent was discriminatory and not fit for purpose. But this time the verdict came from the body the UK agreed to answer to when it signed the UN’s racial discrimination treaty in 1966. Prevent Watch was one of eight organisations that had submitted evidence to the Committee ahead of its conclusions. One of our clients, a mother whose child had been referred by their school, flew to Geneva to tell the Committee in person what harm that referral had done to her family. The UK government had a year to respond. When it filed its reply in September 2025, it did not engage with the substance of what the UN Committee had found. It answered different questions […]

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Educator’s Resource on Prevent: Safeguarding not Securitisation

Prevent Watch, in collaboration with Amnesty UK and Liberty, have put together a valuable resource for educators on the Prevent Duty entitled ‘Safeguarding not Securitisation’. The 28-page booklet was put together after feedback from educators who wanted to know what their rights were in relation to Prevent, and who had become aware of the dangers of relying on ‘gut instinct’ in referrals, specifically when it comes to students. The current government and school guidance on Prevent do not take these harms into account, nor do they provide guidance on how to navigate Prevent while protecting students’ and teachers’ rights. This has left educators in the difficult situation of having to navigate Prevent as a statutory duty, and default to the Prevent Duty as a safeguarding protocol, while being increasingly aware that it violates many of the core principles of safeguarding and can infringe on several key rights. The booklet debunks […]

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Southport Inquiry highlights how Prevent deprofessionalises public services

The Southport Inquiry embodies our warning that the Prevent duty has created conditions in which teachers, social workers and other frontline professionals are increasingly unable to act on their own expertise, and are required to defer to a counter-terrorism framework, writes Dr Layla Aitlhadj. In January of 2025, then Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced there would be a public inquiry into the Southport attack that took the lives of 3 young girls, injured many more and left their families and the nation in grief. Following the trial of the perpetrator, Axel Rudukubana, it had become public knowledge that he had been known to several agencies and referred to Prevent three times. The inquiry was described by the Home Secretary as a way to “get to the truth of what happened and what needs to change”. The next day Prime Minister Keir Starmer re-emphasised the fact that the perpetrator had been […]

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‘None of what he was doing and saying had anything to do with becoming a terrorist’ – mum of autistic teen who passed through Channel programme speaks

At the point of involvement in the Channel programme, since my son had been referred to Prevent, this fundamentally altered how professionals viewed him, and it had real consequences for how they interpreted and responded to risk, vulnerability, and identity – the whole process was punitive and did not do justice to my autistic son.  I wanted to share my son’s story to show how Prevent and Channel processes can fail to meet the needs of neurodivergent children, and how they can misinterpret autistic traits such as hyperfocus, imitation, and social vulnerability as ideological commitment, especially when it comes to adolescence and digitally mediated environments. We engaged with Prevent and Channel in good faith and I hope his story informs more proportionate, neurodiversity-informed practice. I do not dispute the importance of safeguarding or responding to genuine risks of extremism. My son Luke* has had difficulties from nursery age. He was first diagnosed […]

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How is the Prevent duty in Scotland implemented and who is standing against it?

Legal guidance compels the Prevent duty in Scotland so public authorities must implement the policy. A closer look at key differences in their approach provides insights for action and directs us to the organisations resisting the Prevent duty in Scotland. By Zara W. Tahir National security, and by extension, counter terrorism, remains a reserved matter in Scotland, and therefore under Westminster control.  However, one arm of the counter-terorrism strategy, the Prevent duty, requires the cooperation of public institutions north of the border, many of which are devolved.  This tension between reserved and devolved powers has led to key differences in how the Prevent duty is implemented in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK, particularly England. Scottish MPs voice concerns with Prevent  In 2015, the Counterterrorism and Security Act was debated for five days in the UK Parliament. MPs raised concerns about its application in Scotland; these criticisms of the […]

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Challenging the Prevent duty in securitised schools

Our recent webinar explored the Prevent duty in securitised schools, the recent aspects that further strengthen Prevent and what Prevent Watch can do to challenge referrals.  By Mariam A Schools in the UK have increasingly become sites of securitisation, rather than safe places for learning and free expression. One of several changes that has facilitated this in the last decade is the introduction of Prevent – part of the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy CONTEST – as a statutory duty for educators. This presence of the Prevent duty in education has contributed to the increased security and surveillance in classrooms, which has been flagged as a concern by several human rights groups as well as the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education. These concerns are shared by Prevent Watch. In our recent webinar, we explored how Prevent has contributed to […]

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