The Internet brings marvellous opportunities to children and young people with the ability to learn new skills and visit websites which engage and enrich their lives. However, the Internet also brings dangers such as online predators, who will try and contact children through websites and software apps.
More recently, there has been an increase in groups and individuals trying to approach young people to recruit them for political or religious ideas. This is known as online radicalisation and can be described as;
“The actions of an individual or group who use the Internet and digital technology to groom a young person into following their extremist ideas.”
There have been cases in the news over the past year of groups like Islamic State (ISIS) using the Internet and social media to recruit young people to fight in the conflict in Syria. In addition, there are examples of right wing groups such as Britain First and the English Defence League using Facebook and Twitter to engage with internet users.
On 1st July 2015, the Department for Education released their ‘Departmental advice for schools and childcare providers’ in the PREVENT Duty. This guidance was issued to help childcare providers understand the implications of the PREVENT Duty and to help schools identify how they can protect young people from risk.
In short, all schools have a duty under the Counter Terrorism And Security Act to keep children safe from harm, especially from the risks of radicalisation and extremism.
It will come as no surprise that schools many have been left wondering where they will find the resources (both in terms of time and money) required to implement these additional requirements. The demand for information comes as no surprise to the team here at www.e-safetysupport.com. On the day we released our anti-radicalisation checklist for schools, we saw an incredible demand for the information - our website traffic was 600% greater than average, and over 10% of our members visited the site within 6 hours of the information being released.
Due to this unprecedented demand, we have developed a school extremism and anti-radicalisation policy. The model policy can be used as a template and adapted as appropriate for your specific school needs.
This policy is available exclusively to E-safety Support Premium Plus Members.
Anti-Radicalisation Checklist
Don't forget to login and download your anti-radicalisation checklist for schools.
This checklist will help identify the key elements your school should have in place. It is available to all E-safety Support members.
To download the checklist, log into your E-safety Support account and go the 'Guidance' section of your dashboard.
More extremism and anti-radicalisation resources will be added soon - find out more.
