Between August 2016 and July 2017, just 24 cases from higher education providers were referred to “Channel”, the government’s programme that provides “support” at an early stage to people who were identified as being vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism.
It’s a number that the Office for Students (OfS) – which is the body (in England) charged with ensuring that universities comply with the “Prevent” counter terrorism duty – says is “broadly consistent” with the previous years’ statistics.
One reading could be that the figure demonstrates that university campuses are not the hotbeds of extremism that some fear they are.
But that’s not the view of William Shawcross – the author of the government’s long awaited (and internally delayed) independent review of Prevent – who thinks it’s a sign of provider and regulatory failure.
