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.
Earlier this week it was revealed that Axel Rudakubana, the teenager who murdered three little girls in Southport last summer, was referred three times to Prevent. He was this week jailed for a minimum of 52 years after pleading guilty to the killings.
Although his violent behaviour was concerning, Rudakubana was judged on each occasion not to pose a terrorism risk.
Government data seen by Schools Week shows his is not an isolated case.
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.
Children are not getting the help they need
But despite raising concerns about vulnerable – and potentially violent – pupils, school leaders say children are not receiving the help they need through Prevent.
As they were deemed not to be driven by a terrorist ideology, their cases did not fall under Prevent’s remit.
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.”
‘Dearth of support’
Richard Sheriff, the chief executive of the Red Kite Learning Trust in Yorkshire, said children’s potential involvement in violent knife and gang crime was a serious concern.
“I can think of a number over the years where we’ve worried about them and their safety – for themselves and for others around them,” he said.
Their behaviour “might express itself in things that are related to terrorist ideology, but the root is about trauma. It’s about the home situation. It’s about mental health.”
And for that there is a “complete dearth of support”.
Margaret Mulholland, SEND and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, said that while schools took safeguarding extremely seriously, “leaders are not experts in terrorism and rely on being able to access external support when it is required.”
There “must be proper mechanisms and expertise in place to ensure appropriate intervention when young people in complex situations are in need of help,” but it would be “sensible for Prevent to review the way in which it classifies risk”.
Outside the remit
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.”
In 2023, a review of Prevent for the Home Office found that it was being used by some as a way to “fast track” vulnerable people to other forms of support.
“This is not what Prevent was designed for and is diverting valuable resources from minimising actual terrorism risk,” the report said.
Prevent ‘places ideologies into pigeonholes’
But some criticise Prevent for too narrowly defining who can receive its help. A person’s behaviour must be driven by an ideology – including extreme right-wing, Islamist, and “incel” misogyny – to reach the threshold for intervention.
Just 8 per cent of all school referrals in the year to April 2024 resulted in a decision to give the child specialised support through Prevent — what the scheme refers to as being “adopted as a Channel case.”
Roughly 11 per cent of school referrals received specialised Prevent support before Covid. During the pandemic, the number rose slightly to 15 per cent.
Fiyaz Mughal OBE, the founder of Faith Matters and a counter-extremism specialist, said: “The current classification system in Prevent that places ideologies into pigeonholes has to substantially change.
“We need to start with the assessment of the risk that someone poses. If we start at this, without trying to fit into ideologies initially, we have a much better chance of trying to put into place support or diversionary activities.”
‘Take Prevent out of schools’
But some experts caution against widening Prevent’s remit.
Holmwood said: “That would still be a way of rationing support for the health and well-being of young people towards those who might be understood to represent a threat to others, rather than provide it on the basis of individual need.”
He suggested it would be “appropriate” to take Prevent “out of schools, and concentrate on safeguarding and addressing vulnerabilities without a security focus”.
But concerns over children’s exposure to – and interest in — violence are growing.
In October Ken McCallum, the director general of MI5, said the agency was “seeing far too many cases where very young people are being drawn into poisonous online extremism”.
Vicki Evans, a senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism, told The Guardian in December that children as young as 10 were viewing a “pick and mix of horror” on the web that pushed them towards violence.
Yvonne Richards, the director of the charity Since 9/11, which helps teachers tackle extremism in the classroom, said children’s increased exposure to violence through social media was not being addressed.
“If you become fixated on [violent ideas], those can really thrive and grow in an online world,” she said.
At the same time, “we’ve seen youth services absolutely wiped out of communities.”
The result was less face-to-face interaction, more community segregation, and fewer places for young people who were struggling.
Changes underway
In December, Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, conceded that “a lack of clarity remains over whether Prevent should be confined to cases of clear ideology or should also be picking up cases where the ideology is less clear, or where there is a fixation with violence.”
She announced extra measures to “strengthen” the programme, including the appointment of an independent commissioner.
Lord David Anderson took up the role earlier this week, as the government announced its review of Rudakabana’s case found his Prevent referrals should have reached the threshold for intervention.
Cooper told Parliament on Tuesday that too much weight had been placed on Rudakabana’s lack of ideology, and that “cases such as these, given his age and complex needs, should be referred to channel.”
“The Prevent programme is vital for our national security. But we need it to be effective.”
