Parents struggling with extremism – is the Prevent plan working?

The head teacher of a co-ed school in a designated Prevent London borough told a small audience of Muslim parents this week how she was dreading the forthcoming spring holiday.

Her comment was in the context of the struggle parents, schools and the authorities are having day after day in stopping impressionable teenagers from being lured to Syria to join Islamic State.

It was also in the knowledge the three girls from Bethnal Green Academy had waited for the half term break before making their journey to Syria.

She urged those who had turned up to give these youngsters space to express themselves and not to dismiss them or their views.

The meeting had been arranged by community representatives themselves. They want radicalisation to be seen as a safeguarding issue.

I got the impression from the head teacher that this issue was landing on her desk almost daily with parents at her door desperately seeking help, for they have nowhere else to go.

Maybe that paints a more accurate impression of the scale of radicalisation because government is reluctant to do so.

‘Less extreme step’

The fact that 30 priority areas under the Prevent scheme has reached out to 250 mosques out of at least 1,500 in the UK and 120 faith and community groups doesn’t tell you very much.

Today’s report from the Home Affairs Select Committee on foreign fighters calls for a vast improvement in communication between police, schools and parents in the wake of the debacle over letters never reaching the families of those three girls.

But MPs also recommend – and this may be the crucial element – an advice service open to all: “a less extreme step than using the anti-terrorist hotline.”

That would also place police at a distance, and may remove the element of fear that was so apparent among the parents I spoke to at this meeting.

Many see Prevent as ineffective, worthless and divisive, and in desperate need of a complete overhaul.

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