TY - JOUR
T1 - British Educators Preventing Terrorism Through ‘Safeguarding’ the ‘Vulnerable’
AU - Thomas, Paul
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2024/12/1
Y1 - 2024/12/1
N2 - Educators are central to the implementation of Britain’s Prevent Strategy, through the ‘Prevent duty’. This mandatory reporting responsibility, shared with professional practitioners in health and welfare, requires educators to spot and refer individual students potentially ‘vulnerable to’ or ‘at risk’ of radicalisation. The Prevent duty explicitly instructs educators and educational institutions to understand this responsibility as ‘safeguarding’ and to operationalise it through existing safeguarding paradigms and mechanisms, an approach mirrored by other Western countries. This framing of terrorism prevention as ‘safeguarding’ within education, health and welfare has come under strong criticism from scholars who see it both as a perversion and as a securitisation of ‘traditional’ safeguarding. There has been too little consideration of what ‘safeguarding’ represents within modern education and how coherently, therefore, terrorism prevention approaches such as the Prevent duty fit. The article contributes to addressing this deficit, arguing that safeguarding within modern education is a form of anticipatory security, an approach of ‘new public management’, which sees anticipating and preventing risk to students as a core responsibility for all professionals. In this way, the article argues that counter-terrorism prevention responsibilities for educators, such as Britain’s Prevent duty, are entirely consistent with broader, pre-existing safeguarding paradigms within education.
AB - Educators are central to the implementation of Britain’s Prevent Strategy, through the ‘Prevent duty’. This mandatory reporting responsibility, shared with professional practitioners in health and welfare, requires educators to spot and refer individual students potentially ‘vulnerable to’ or ‘at risk’ of radicalisation. The Prevent duty explicitly instructs educators and educational institutions to understand this responsibility as ‘safeguarding’ and to operationalise it through existing safeguarding paradigms and mechanisms, an approach mirrored by other Western countries. This framing of terrorism prevention as ‘safeguarding’ within education, health and welfare has come under strong criticism from scholars who see it both as a perversion and as a securitisation of ‘traditional’ safeguarding. There has been too little consideration of what ‘safeguarding’ represents within modern education and how coherently, therefore, terrorism prevention approaches such as the Prevent duty fit. The article contributes to addressing this deficit, arguing that safeguarding within modern education is a form of anticipatory security, an approach of ‘new public management’, which sees anticipating and preventing risk to students as a core responsibility for all professionals. In this way, the article argues that counter-terrorism prevention responsibilities for educators, such as Britain’s Prevent duty, are entirely consistent with broader, pre-existing safeguarding paradigms within education.
KW - Terrorism
KW - Prevention
KW - Safeguarding
KW - Education
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85189517946&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00071005.2024.2318697
DO - 10.1080/00071005.2024.2318697
M3 - Article
VL - 72
SP - 675
EP - 692
JO - British Journal of Educational Studies
JF - British Journal of Educational Studies
SN - 0007-1005
IS - 6
ER -