Schools Week: UK school Prevent referrals rise – but fewer get support

Schools are increasingly referring children to the government’s anti-terrorism programme, but fewer than one in ten youngsters got support through the Prevent scheme, data seen by Schools Week reveals.

In the year to April 2024, two in five school referrals were found to involve a vulnerable child, but one deemed not to be driven by a terrorist ideology.

That meant more than 1,000 cases from schools were classed as “vulnerability present but no ideology or CT [counter-terrorism] risk” – an increase of 140 per cent since before Covid.

It was the highest of any Prevent category.

But despite raising concerns about vulnerable – and potentially violent – pupils, school leaders say children are not receiving the help they need through Prevent, because their cases did not demonstrate an ideology and did not fall under Prevent.

Dan Morrow, the leader of the Cornwall Education Learning Trust, said he had dealt with Prevent referrals that staff felt may have been better handled by mental health providers or other social services – but that an alternative pathway hadn’t been available.

“We’re caught between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “It doesn’t meet the threshold for social care involvement. It doesn’t meet the threshold for mental health support, a CAMHS referral. And nor does it meet the threshold of Prevent.

“And yet there are behaviours going on that we need to identify – and then intervene.

It’s common for people involved in cases that are found to fall outside Prevent’s remit to be redirected to other social services, said John Holmwood, a Prevent expert and co-author of The People’s Review of Prevent.

But it’s unclear whether all children are successfully redirected, or whether these services are able to provide adequate help.

One problem, experts say, is that health and social services have been decimated over the past decade.

“Everything is falling apart,” said Keziah Featherstone, executive headteacher at the Mercian Trust in Walsall and co-chair of the Headteachers’ Roundtable.

CAMHS referrals, she noted, could take “months and months and months”. A special needs diagnosis? “Years and years and years.”

Mulholland said there was a need to ensure specialist mental health support “is implemented holistically across the school environment so that no child misses out”.

Holmwood added: “The problem is that there are serious limitations in the provision of mental health and youth services. Politicians have failed to provide the resources.”

Read the full article in Schools Week.