The People’s Review of Prevent is an alternative review to the Government Shawcross Review.
This review provides a voice to the people most impacted by the Prevent Duty.
Prevent is described as ‘safeguarding’ children from harms. However, under Prevent, safeguarding is focused on protecting the wider public from children believed to be ‘risky’, rather than protecting children from harms.
Throughout our report we present case studies that show how real these harms can be and the distress they cause to children and their families and carers.
We assert the need for a new notion of “British values” that suits the universal character of our population in this excerpt from the People’s Review of Prevent.
The Prevent strategy of the UK’s counter-extremism policy is out of step with the realities of British society, and its placing of religious communities of belonging under suspicion is counter-productive
An excerpt from the People’s Review of Prevent, on the Prevent strategy and children’s rights, data collection, bogus claims of ‘success’ and why Prevent must be delinked from Manchester.
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’. This became part of the national curriculum on the back of the Birmingham Trojan Horse Affair, a deeply problematic precursor to any notion of ‘British values’. During this event it was claimed that teachers at Park View School were guilty of ‘Islamicising’ the school. In fact, no charges of extremism were brought against teachers, and the cases against the senior leadership team collapsed due to an ‘abuse of process’ by lawyers acting for the Department of Education, including non-disclosure of relevant evidence. The Trojan Horse Affair demonised an outstanding Muslim-majority school and made it the means to justify the teaching of the
David Cameron’s ‘muscular liberalism’ has done away with multiculturalism and constructed a notion of ‘British values’ that scapegoats ethnic minorities by presuming they share none of these values. Prof. John Holmwood argues in this article for the Islamic Human Rights Commission that this has huge implications for education, since it has been injected into schools via the academies (and free schools) programme which removed schools from local authority control and which was actively promoted by Policy Exchange and pursued by Michael Gove. The requirement to promote ‘fundamental British values’ that is part of Prevent is incorporated under Section 78 of the Education Act 2002, which means that the moral and spiritual development of children is now subordinated to a national security agenda. Source: The British Government’s Prevent strategy: Putting religious intolerance at the heart of policy – IHRC
This short journal article by Dr. Khadijah Elshayyal considers the impact of the statutory promotion of ‘fundamental British values’ through Prevent on Muslims in the UK.
The Birmingham Trojan Horse affair – a supposed plot to Islamicise schools – which hit the headlines in March 2014 has been the main impetus for changes to the Government’s Prevent strategy. The affair was viewed as deriving from a failure of integration of some within Britain’s Muslim communities and their embrace of values inimical to democracy, the rule of law and tolerance toward other religions. New guidance on fundamental British values (democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and religious tolerance) was put forward to prepare pupils for life in modern Britain. Yet Ofsted reports prior to 2014 had found no evidence of anything untoward in the schools in question and had declared the pupils to be well-prepared. Additionally, professional misconduct cases against teachers allegedly involved in the plot collapsed because of improprieties in the pursuit of the prosecution case. Yet the narrative of a threat to integration and
Ofsted wants schools to embed ‘respect for different beliefs’, but doesn’t practice what it preaches, says this teacher. Read more
Chief inspector of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, delivered a speech at the Policy Exchange in London last night. Entitled ‘The Ties that Bind’, her speech discussed the promotion of so-called British values, the encouragement of cohesion and integration and why schools must be the forums for understanding and spreading these ideals. “The current meaning of the term ‘British values’ was first defined in the 2011 Prevent Strategy,” Spielman said. “The role of schools in promoting them was formalised in Department for Education guidance in 2014, to help both independent and state schools understand their responsibilities. This guidance set out the duty of all schools in England, state and independent, to actively promote the four British values of: democracy; the rule of law; individual liberty; and mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.” Read more
The UK’s Tory security minister last night accused the SNP as being ‘shameful’ for advising teachers against using the phrase ‘British values’ when discussing terrorism with pupil as it may be deemed offensive Read more
