Excerpt:
One of the fundamental responsibilities that we have as educators is in loco parentis: we protect our pupils from harm, in whatever form. Safeguarding is so fundamentally hardwired into what we do, and yet for some in our sector, our duties under Prevent cause a sense of unease and discomfort. Two years on from those duties coming into effect, critics still regularly denounce Prevent as tantamount to spying, or worse "Islamophobia".
But these criticisms themselves are dangerous. By putting a question mark in a teacher's mind about whether to report concerns they might have, making them second guess their judgements, could put a pupil in real harm.