Education referrals to Prevent are up 16% year-on-year but disturbing cases of students being persecuted for legitimate protest or making flippant remarks raise fears that discrimination, prejudice and racism have infected the government’s anti-terrorism strategy, says Peter Radford
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When I first heard a colleague at Amnesty International mention that the charity was launching a campaign to call on the government to scrap the Prevent Duty my response was: Why?

For those of us working in schools the Prevent duty forms part of our regular safeguarding updates. In that regard, it is presented and understood as “common sense” guidance to help prevent vulnerable young people from being drawn into extremist groups and developing extreme ideas which could pose a future threat.

What could possibly be wrong with that? I had never given it a second thought.

So I was shocked to discover that in reality, far from being safeguarded by the duty, many often-vulnerable young people are being unfairly discriminated against and viewed with suspicion and fear simply because of their race, religion, or neuro-diversity.

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