The Prevent duty places duties on the authority, colleges, schools and childcare providers to help protect young people from radicalisation and exposure to violent extremism. This duty includes all forms of violent extremist ideology, including (but not limited to) the Far Right and Islamist extremism, Irish Republicanism and Animal Rights extremism.
This is no different to any other aspect of children’s safeguarding and can be met in a number of ways within education settings. In Waltham Forest, we offer support to all educational settings in meeting the Prevent duty. Details of this can be found below.
The Prevent strategy was published by the Government in 2011, it was followed by the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015.
This specified authorities, whilst delivering their functions, must have due regard to the need to the duty to prevent people being drawn into terrorism.
The ‘Prevent’ duty states that authorities must “safeguard children and young people in England from extremists and extremist views in school and in out of school hours learning, and stop young people from becoming radicalised or acting on extreme views."
The Prevent duty guidance is provided to support authorities meet this duty.
For information on Waltham Forest's wider provision for Prevent-related work, please visit the Community Safety section of the Council website.
In 2015, the Department for Education published guidance for schools and childcare providers to help them protect young people from radicalisation.
This guidance is relevant to governors, leaders and all staff in:
This guidance can be accessed by all staff but will be of particular interest to safeguarding leads.
The DfE have also produced a guide for schools on how terrorist groups such as ISIL use social media for online radicalisation to encourage travel to Syria and Iraq.
The Prevent team in Waltham Forest offer a range of free opportunities and resources to support education settings in meeting the Prevent duty on both a proactive and reactive basis.
This offer includes:
Pupil engagement sessions and curriculum materials, as part of our local Digital Resilience package.
For information on any of the above please contact the Prevent team.
Email: Community Safety
Telephone: 0208 496 3000
The Revised Prevent Duty guidance for schools and education settings, issued in 2015 refers to 'appropriate levels of filtering and monitoring' online content. We have put together two guidance documents for education settings and filtering providers around what appropriate filtering and monitoring means.
Institutions are also recommended to contact the Community Safety Team for further guidance and support around specific cases or queries relating to IT filtering and policy updates.
Telephone: 0208 496 3000
CHANNEL is part of the Prevent strategy and is a multi-agency approach to identify and provide support to individuals who are at risk of being drawn into terrorism.
The CHANNEL programme uses a multi-agency approach to protect vulnerable people by:
WRAP
WRAP stands for Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent. It is designed for practitioners who have little or no knowledge of the preventing extremism agenda, but who work with vulnerable young people or communities.
In Waltham Forest, we recommend face-to-face WRAP training on roughly a two-year basis or at times of high staff turnover to ensure frontline practitioners are kept up-to-date on Prevent and their responsibilities within the duty.
Training is designed to:
All sessions are FREE. For information contact the Prevent Team.
Email: communitysafety@walthamforest.gov.uk
Telephone: 0208 496 3000
Prevent - Online training
E-learning training from the Home Office is available and is designed to help raise awareness of radicalisation.
It is aimed at those with responsibilities under the Prevent duty, particularly frontline staff.
It will help staff to identify the signs that someone may be at risk and where to go for support. This is introductory training. It provides a foundation on which to develop further knowledge around the risks of radicalisation.
Access the Prevent online training.
CHANNEL Online training
Practitioners are encouraged to complete the CHANNEL e-learning module, which provides information on the referral and intervention programme that the Local Authority utilises for cases of extremism and radicalisation.
It will outline the duties and responsibilities that practitioners have in this safeguarding process.
Completing the module should enable you to:
Evidence of participating in this course can also be verified through the printing of a certificate, available once all sections have been completed.
Access the Channel online training.
For further information, you can email or phone the Senior Programme Manager (Prevent Education) Amy Strode.
Email: Amy.strode@walthamforest.gov.uk
Telephone: 07816150037.