Asquith Primary School
The Prevent Strategy
What is the Prevent Strategy?
Prevent is a government strategy designed to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorist or extremist causes. It covers all types of extremism, including extreme right wing, Islamist and mysongynistic groups.
Extremism is the active opposition to our fundamental values, including the rule of law, individual liberty and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.
Radicalisation refers to the process by which a person comes to support terrorism and extremist ideologies associated with terrorist groups.
How does Prevent apply to schools?
On 1st July 2015 all schools became subject to a duty under section 26 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 to have “due regard” to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. This duty is known as the Prevent duty. This means we have a responsibility to protect children from extremist and violent views in the same way that we protect them from any other harm.
Importantly, we provide children with a safe place to discuss these issues at an age-appropriate level so they have a better understanding of how to protect themselves.
What does this mean at Asquith Primary School?
Many of the things that we do everyday in school to help children to become positive members of society also contribute to the Prevent strategy. These include:
- Having a strong nurturing school ethos
- Focussing on our core school FERDI values
- 'Respecting Diversity' being one of our curriculum 'Golden Threads'
- Discriminatory language being one of the 'Red Card' (zero tolerance) behaviours in our Behaviour Policy.
- Exploring other cultures and religions as part of our curriculum and assembly cycle.
- Supporting children to develop a strong, positive self-identity throughout our PSHE curriculum.
- Promoting British Values through our curriculum and assemblies.
We also protect our children from the risk of radicalisation in other ways, for example using filters on the internet to make sure they cannot access extremist material and by vetting visitors who come into school to work with pupils.
In addition, we ensure our staff are well-trained to recognise the signs and indicators of radicalisation and know what to do if they have concerns about a child becoming radicalised, following our school safeguarding procedures.
Please click here to view our school's Prevent and Extremism Risk Assessment:
Further information
If you have any questions about the Prevent Strategy and what it means for your child, please do not hesitate to contact us.
The following sources may be useful for your further information: