The Stockholm Center for the Rights of the Child has the pleasure of inviting you to

a seminar with

Professor Neville Harris

On England’s ‘Prevent’ strategy in schools: the implications for children’s rights

Neville Harris is a Professor of Law at the University of Manchester. He is the Co-director of the Manchester Centre for Regulation, Governance and Public Law. He is also a Visiting Professor of Welfare of Law at Göteborg University. His research focuses mainly on social welfare law, particularly the fields of education (including children’s rights) and social security. His books include Law in a Complex State (2013), Children: the Modern Law (4th ed.) (as co-author) (2013), Resolving Disputes about Educational Provision (as co-author) (2011) and Education, Law and Diversity (2007), Children, Education and Health: International Perspectives on Law and Policy (editor) (2005) and Children, Sex Education and the Law (editor) (1996). He is the editor of both the Education Law Journal and the Journal of Social Security Law.

The UK Government’s ‘Prevent’ strategy was launched in 2011 and aims to prevent children and young people being drawn into extremism, including violence. Schools are central to this strategy and they have been given a twin role: countering radicalisation through teaching which instils ‘British values’ such as democracy, respect for diversity and the rule of law; and identifying individuals who are being drawn into extremism so they can be re-educated and/or supervised in some way. This process intensified following the so-called ‘Trojan horse’ affair, in which a number of schools in Birmingham were found to have been focusing illegitimately on a culturally-specific non-secular approach to education, and the case of three London school pupils, two of whom were aged 15, who travelled to Syria via Turkey and are believed to have become ‘jihadi brides’. It has culminated in regulations on the promotion of ‘British values’ in schools and a new Act of Parliament, the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. Among other things, the 2015 Act gives schools a duty to ‘have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’ and to follow central government guidance concerning this duty. In this paper I will discuss some implications of these developments for children’s rights, both in relation to education and more generally. 

RSVP by September 19^th to vera.yllner@juridicum.su.se.
Please share invitation with colleagues.