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Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE)

Should this be the responsibility of Citizenship teachers?

The duty on schools to Prevent Violent Extremism - DCSF-now DfE- guidance for schools - is highly controversial. Many teachers feel that much of the PVE strategy potentially drives a wedge between them and their pupils and the community the school is set in. Teachers are nevertheless being asked to do this and in many schools the Citizenship teacher has been identified as the leader of such work.

Citizenship teachers are well-placed to have an understanding of pupil's views around such controversial, topical and sensitive issues and it is within their remit to develop thinking in political literacy, critical thinking and enquiry and enable pupils to become advocates and representatives for themselves and others. A Citizenship class should be a safe environment where each pupil's standpoints are listened to and respected.

Such work is also clearly linked to Community Cohesion,a duty placed upon schools from September 2008 and a measure of school leadership in Ofsted inspections. The challenge is significant for Citizenship teachers and school leaders. They are asked to interpret this new paradigm in a creative way and to help pupils unpick the meaning of legislation on Preventing Violent Extremism and Community Cohesion.

Join the discussion on the Citizenship Teachers' Forum.

How can schools contribute to PVE and Comunity Cohesion?

Let us be clear, the duties on schools to Prevent Violent Extremism and promote Community Cohesion must not equate to spying on students or trying to create cohesion. It is about political literacy, empowerment and helping young people to take action on things that concern them. In that way we enable problems and issues to be explored, challenged and addressed more effectiovely . Broadly, a school's approach can be grouped under the three following headings:

Teaching, learning and curriculum

Helping pupils to learn to understand others; to value diversity whilst also promoting shared values; to promote awareness of human rights and to apply and defend them, and develop the skills of participation and responsible action.

Equity and excellence

To ensure equal opportunities for all to succeed at the highest level possible, striving to remove barriers to access and participation in learning and wider activities and working to eliminate variations in outcomes for different groups.

Engagement and extended services

To provide reasonable means for children, young people, their friends and families to interact with people from different backgrounds and build positive relations: including links with different schools and communities and the provision of extended services with opportunities for pupils, families and the wider community to take part in activities and receive services which build positive interaction and achievement for all groups.

In relation to the Citizenship education curriculum, the Prevent strategy asks teachers to consider cultural awareness to facilitate the promotion of shared values, developing confidence to effectively facilitate discussion and debate around issues of identity and diversity, including those relating to ethnicity, faith and belief, to challenge extremist narratives and have an awareness of what schools would do if they had a concern about individuals vulnerable to violent extremism as part of their wider safeguarding responsibilities.

Work in preventing violent extemism and promoting comunity cohesion to date covers teaching and learning activities, CPD, school linking rojects, the Who Do We Think We Are Week website and resources, the Islam and Citizenship education project and ACTs work with "Who do we think we are" on approaches to teaching baout the BNP and extreme political groups.

However, the core of the issue is how to help young people develop critical thinking skills, to develop lines of action around political issues in their communities - for example around racism and xenophobia, around social inequality, around the economic dispartities between communities.

Why teach Children and Young People about community cohesion and the prevention of violent extremism?

In and out of school life, children live, interact and work in communities that are diverse in terms of cultures, religions/beliefs, ethnicities and social backgrounds. We use the school community as a platform to provide meaningful interactions between pupils, staff, families and the local community and create opportunities to mix with, and learn with and from people from this wide range of backgrounds.

The school community creates an open and safe climate for different learning experiences, and facilitates equal educational opportunities for C&YP regardless of their backgrounds or circumstances.

By providing equal learning opportunities, stimulating and encouraging learners to explore their own identity, discuss ideas, form educated views and address sensitive, controversial and topical issues, it is anticipated that they will become active participants in building and promoting their own spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development.

This positive teaching and learning environment also helps pupils learn to understand and value diversity, challenge assumptions and build resilience to the messages of extremism-whatever its origin.

Teachers can help to break down barriers, reduce ignorance and prejudice and empower learners to engage with and be committed to their community – be it their school, local, national or international community. By creating a positive school ethos, accentuating inclusion and interaction,it is hoped children will not only influence and participate in decision making but will understand the impact of their decision making on others and take responsibility for their actions.

In effect, children will develop the skills and knowledge to become successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens, achieve their aims in a positive and conducive way and ultimately achieve their full potential in later life.

The following classroom and teacher resources can help you deliver effective lessons on Community Cohesion and preventing violent extremism

Identity, Diversity and Citizenship – A critical review of educational resources

This remains the only comprehensive review of teaching resources to support the Community Cohesion duty in the context of Identity and Diversity in the Citizenship Curriculum. Although a little dated now, this review outlines common problems with resources portending to deliver on issues of identity and diversity, providing guidance for teachers seeking resources to deliver the Identity and Diversity strand.

The review gives an overview of teaching resources available, serving to inform teachers. It is not a classroom resource as such, but will help inform teachers’ thinking in the area of Identity and Diversity: Living together in the UK from the perspective of Citizenship education KS3/4. In terms of Community Cohesion and PVE, the review enables the teacher to consider the quality of the resources, its breadth and scope, and how it can be used to engage the learner. The review considers:

• Identity, belonging, community

• Britain – a multicultural society

• Immigration, refugees and asylum seekers

• Racism, prejudice and discrimination

• Black and Asian history

• Religious belief and practice

• EU and Commonwealth

This review will also inform choices of teaching materials and resources in History, Geography, RE, English and Drama

Identity, Diversity and Citizenship – A critical review of educational resources

The website Who Do we Think We Are?

This website provides access to a wide range of teaching resources regarding identity and diversity; including case studies of successful education projects undertaken with groups of children and young people to engage them in an exploration of identity and cultural diversity. In particular, case studies involving active and creative learning outside the classroom in different community-based, arts and heritage settings, school-to-school linking and twinning initiatives and also partnership/exchange programmes for groups of young people and their teachers. Guidance for teachers on how to deal with the BNP will be on the site in late 2009.

The website is not just intended to support teaching about issues to do with identity during WDWTWA? Week each year, rather to provide a series of activities that can be developed in a cross-curricular as well as a Citizenship education context. The website contains case studies, learning resources, tool kits and guides, events and a discussion board. There is also a section of the site for young people and details of how to get involved in the activities across the nation each year.

Teachers have accepted for a long time that students should learn about Identity and Diversity. Teaching about identity however, appears a difficult task altogether. In the first place, many aspects of a person’s identity are private and may rightly be of no concern to the teacher. And in any case, many young people are still in the process of discovering their identities, which may continue to develop over time. So the question facing teachers is ‘what aspects of a person’s identity are relevant to the issue of diversity and community cohesion and how education can do anything to influence someone’s identity?

This website is a partnership between Citizenship, History and Geography teaching associations and supports work in a variety of other subjects and whole school contexts.

http://www.wdwtwa.org.uk/

War Child

The purpose of War Child is to educate young people about war, especially the effect of conflict and poverty on young people. This is useful to explore community cohesion in a wider, global context and for comparison between communities living with war and communities pupils are familiar with. War Child has a range of Citizenship classroom resources aimed at students in years 9 to 11 available to download. This cohesive scheme of work includes seven interlinking lessons that are both easy to use and engaging for students. Teachers may have to differentiate work according to individual need. Each lesson is designed around a four-part lesson structure and includes clear objectives and learning outcomes. It has been designed around the Citizenship education curriculum in KS3/4 and gives students the opportunity to learn about a wide range of issues including child rights, conflict, global interdependence and active participation. The resource is especially useful for encouraging debate and discussion about these issues. Each lesson is fully resourced and contains activities that allow flexibility in approach and delivery. The main lessons cover the following themes:

• Understanding Global Interdependence

• The Impact of War

• Child Soldiers

• Street Children in Conflict with the Law

• Active Participation

• Charity Planning Activity

There is also an on line resource site designed by young, for young people called Angry Mob and the charity group offers school visits, display materials and school fundraising packs. This is useful for older pupils.

Understanding Global Interdependence and the Rights of the Child is a particularly good resource on this site as it links learning about human rights and learning about war to pupils’ own experiences.

Active Participation is another particularly good resource on this site as it links learning with active Citizenship, encouraging pupils to engage in their own society/community and campaign for change. This helps deliver GCSE requirements for campaigning in Citizenship.

War Child and also angrymob

Advice for teachers - Considering Terrorism

This briefing paper considers ideas for using “terrorism” as a class theme to explore all three strands of the secondary curriculum and to address Primary Citizenship. The webpage is intended to inspire teachers to use this theme to deliver Citizenship and have a frank discussion with pupils about terrorism. The paper asks a number of critical questions:

• What is terrorism?

• What are "terrorists" trying to achieve?

• Are they achieving it?

• At what cost?

• How should society respond to terrorism and violence?

There is advice on how to explore these matters in relation to all three of the concepts from the Citizenship education curriculum in KS3/4 but the information can also be applied to Primary contexts. Terrorism and violence is not just seen as a single religious or single group issue but also considers animal rights protest and environmental campaigners.

The briefing shows how accessible tackling controversial issues can be and includes links to wider school guidance on extremism and other useful websites and classroom resources including OSDE’s methodology which has been developed by a group of educators, academics and civil society actors. OSDE have produced an excellent powerpoint as a classroom resource to think about terrorism.

Considering Terrorism

Human Rights in Focus - Amnesty Resource

In this resource, three short films have been made to inspire, inform and challenge young people to explore human rights in the classroom, and also through assemblies, film screenings and events in school and beyond.

The accompanying classroom pack contains an outline to the films, lesson plans, worksheets, extension activities, fact sheets and teacher’s notes which invite teachers and young people to explore Human Rights issues in a safe space. This provides an excellent introduction to the issues of social injustice possible motives for violence.

One film specifically looks at the human stories behind Amnesty International’s campaign to close Guant?mo Bay. The accompanying lesson invites young people to explore whether there is ever a case for denying terrorist suspects their human right to a fair trial, and includes the option of taking action to tell Amnesty what they decide. This gives teachers the opportunity to discuss violent extremism in class in a controlled environment and also helps develop ideas on the campaigning element of the Citizenship GCSE.

The ready-to-teach lesson plans for each film unpack the often-controversial issues through activities and debate, empowering young people to make up their own minds.

The resources have been developed as a starting point for students to learn about world affairs in the context of human rights and develop their own ways of taking responsible action, if and when they consider this necessary.

These resources are also useful in History, Geography, RE, English and Drama.

Teachers can download the classroom pack here OR order it for free from amnesty International

The films can also be watched online.

Teach Rights

This is a series of teaching resources, lesson plans and activity packs to inspire teachers to help classes explore issues of human rights in the UK, other countries and globally. It helps teachers explore and inform students’ understanding of controversial global and local issues such as “Refugees and Asylum”, “Death Penalty”, “Modern Slavery” and “Poverty”, “Sexual Rights” and “Traveller Rights”.

These topics are often intricately interrelated with Community Cohesion and PVE in that they consider the situations of multi-cultural societies, focusing on minority cultural or social groups and asking pupils to consider the social situation of these groups. By considering the situations of minority groups in society and the role of the society as a whole, pupils can start to explore, discuss and debate issues relating to social cohesion and community cohesion in other societies as well as their own communities.

These resources provide a starting point for young people to explore the inter-dependence of the world around them and the global nature of the concept of a human right as well as relating this back to their immediate community. Thus teachers can make direct links to local issues and understandings of “community”, “extremism”, “religious identity” or similar. Framing this within the context of human rights provides an educational platform from which to explore conflicting rights and controversial human rights issues, encouraging democratic class debate and discussion of these issues with each other. The information in the teacher’s notes can help guide teachers with information for informing and leading debate in a safe environment.

The issues can be used as powerful learning experiences to consider Community Cohesion and can be used by Citizenship specialists and non-specialists alike.

These resources are also useful in History, Geography, RE and English.

Teach Rights - The resources are free to download from Amnesty’s education webpage, once you have registered online for free.

Community Cohesion: the experiences of an inner-city academy

This is a nine-page article by ACT Council member Billy Crombie, giving practical advice on what the duty to promote community cohesion means in practice in schools and how the National Curriculum for Citizenship education can support it.

The author demonstrates how community cohesion principles can be applied in a Citizenship department, using Salford City Academy as an example. She shows how schools can build on the work they are already doing in this area and how this can be adapted to deliver Citizenship education while promoting community cohesion. Individual classes’ or year groups’ work can go beyond the classroom to involve the wider community.

The article gives practical advice and examples from a real school and can help inform teachers practice and understanding of Community Cohesion. For example:

• Introducing an active Citizenship Day to respond to the increase in anti social behaviour;

• Running active Citizenship campaigns with year seven, where pupils have chosen topics such as the lack of public transport on the estate, the lack of recreation space for young people and the increase in dog dirt;

• Inviting community organisations into the school to work with pupils in years 9 & 10 to develop campaigns for GCSE coursework.

This article can help develop teachers’ thinking about what Community Cohesion really entails and how a class can make a positive contribution to the community beyond the classroom in a wide range of situations.

This resource is specifically about the duty to promote Community Cohesion and possible links to Citizenship. It is especially useful as guidance for Citizenship subject leaders and headteachers developing whole school approaches.

Community Cohesion: the experiences of an inner-city academy The article is available for download from CitizEd’s website.

Oxfam's Global Citizenship Resources

The web-based series gives teachers inspiration and practical tools for incorporating education for Global Citizenship into their lessons and across their school. This is especially focused on primary schools. There is a good introduction for teachers new to the subject as well as an audit for primary schools to see where they are doing well and where there is room for improvement in regards to delivering an education for global citizenship. This is a very useful guide for teachers new to teaching this topic, or starting at a new school. The audit offers practical ideas for addressing issues raised by the teacher.

This resource helps teachers understand and promote the importance of providing a supportive, inclusive and rights-respecting environment for children so they can learn to value and respect their society, themselves and others in the immediate community, global community and in general. Framed in the context of global citizenship, the resource helps explore issues – often highly controversial – connected with identity, social justice and equality. The global framing enables pupils to learn about the universal nature of human rights before drawing on personal experience and local/school examples for comparison.

Included is a series of lesson plans on issues such as poverty, conflict, diversity and identity as well as sustainable development and globalisation and interdependence. Encouraging children to engage with these ideas of valuing everyone, understanding concepts of equality and co-operation, will help develop their sense of community belonging.

This exploration of personal community belonging, together with the development of an understanding of personal and group identity, can make an important contribution to a child’s development with regards to respect for “their” community. A person is less likely to offend against a community which they feel is “theirs”, than against one they feel alienates or undermines them. Therefore developing a sense of personal identity, local community belonging and global community belonging can help reduce the perceived need to resort to acts of violence against the community. Children who have a better understanding of the nature of their community and other communities are potentially less likely to exercise extreme violence against it. In order for this personal development to take place they must develop an understanding of and appreciation for their personal identity,

• the multi-cultural nature of local and/or global communities,respect for and understanding of equality, human rights and diversity.

The series includes sections with ideas for under-5s; key stage 1; and key stage 2 as well as for assemblies. It is well-planned and tried and tested in classrooms.

These resources are also useful in History, Geography, RE, English and PSHE education.

Oxfam's Clobal Citizenship Recsources The resources are free to download from Oxfam’s education webpage.


Useful Documents - Right click to download

Living with radical groups in a democratic world - Guidance for Schools

Uploaded : 13 January 2010

Filename : dealingwithbnp.pdf ( 118 K )

Description : In April 2005, a school in the North of England decided to run a mock general election. In the run-up students in citizenship classes worked on the election processes and nominated their own candidates to stand in the election. Parliamentary candidates from three mainstream parties (Labour, LibDem and Conservative) were invited in to coach the students on campaigning methods and the election process. When some parents and the local British National Party (BNP) candidate himself complained that the BNP had not been invited, the head was forced to answer claims that she was being undemocratic.

The dilemma she faced is one that many teachers recognise, especially, perhaps, in schools with many Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students or where, in the locality, racial tensions are high. Where does the school’s duty lie here especially when the open discussion of policies and practices which some, but not all, regard as ‘racist’ appear to be in contradiction to the schools’ statutory duties to promote race equality and community cohesion?

This document attempts to set out the key issues and arguments in order to help schools arrive at a clear policy in relation to their response to extreme and radical groups. It also offers advice on useful methods to discuss such controversial issues in class. To download the document, please select the link below.

Please be aware that this document represents the views of the authors and should not be taken as representative of government policy. For comments or questions about the content of this document please email wdwtwa@rgs.org


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