School governors told to ‘dismiss’ grooming gangs concerns

[NoNever]

Article in the Telegraph.

Quote “ School governors have been encouraged to dismiss concerns about grooming gangs as “disinformation”, The Telegraph can disclose.
Thousands of governors undergoing safeguarding training this year were presented with a scenario involving rumours of “men belonging to a particular religion” committing “violent crimes against women”.
They were asked to identify the scenario as an “online safety risk” because children were spreading “disinformation”.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/11/04/school-governors-told-to-dismiss-grooming-gangs-concerns/

This is infuriating. For decades girls were told to shut up about grooming gangs and this is the training school governors are being provided in 2025.

Meant to link the report, and hopefully if anyone interested they can take a look. Agree it’s a derail and the focus of this thread should be the governor training, but I do think it’s quite revealing.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-review-of-prevents-report-and-government-response/independent-review-of-prevent-accessible#executive-summary

Yes I’m sure there was a lot of criticism, which means nothing except that there were dissenting views, as here, and I’ve already said that the government implemented many of his recommendations.

That’s very kind - you too.

I’ve given it all quite a bit of thought recently.

as I think that's the fastest growing source of referrals.

Another interesting point .

As the vast majority of actual acts of terrorism in the last 20 years have been by Islamic extremists, and while Prevent has been operating I don’t think we’ve seen any actual ‘far right’ terrorist attacks since it’s in rotation in 2003, is there a chance that over zealous ‘referees’ with an agenda or Prevent workers with an agenda (we have repeatedly seen how important organisations can fall to an activist agenda) are over- egging the numbers?

It’s not hard to cause the ‘fastest rise in referrals’. You just do this:

An 11-year-old primary school pupil was referred to the government’s controversial counter-radicalisation Prevent programme after a teacher mistook the word “alms” for “arms” during a classroom discussion.
The boy’s teacher asked what pupils would do if they found themselves in possession of a lot of money. According to a legal challenge against the school lodged by the boy’s parents, he said he would “give alms to the oppressed”. The teacher interpreted this as “give arms to the oppressed” and made the Prevent referral.

And hey presto, fuel to the ‘right wing’ agenda and suddenly the right wing is conveniently the fastest growing threat and a huge deflection from the actual threat of actual Islamists who are the main ones actually killing people.

To many people are trusting these organisations to be honest.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/27/boy-11-referred-to-prevent-for-wanting-to-give-alms-to-the-oppressed

Can you clarify what you mean by ‘the far right’ please?

Another generalised accusation designed to stop people talking, or reflect badly on those talking.

Care to specify exactly what you mean by ‘hate’ ?

That’s exactly what the figures suggest.

From Times today.
It's hard to unpack what the figures actually mean.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/f41d232d-27b7-426f-93b7-d02089091e5c?shareToken=7fbc72edb04747717456f9312350a3ea
The number of cases referred to the programme hit a record high of 8,778 in the year to March, a 27 per cent increase on the previous year, Home Office figures show.

Overall extreme right-wing concerns accounted for 21 per cent of referrals and Islamist extremism for 10 per cent. Sources said there had been a notable increase in the number of people being referred who had a fascination with US school shootings.

It seems that 36% (3192) were for children between 11-15, I wonder what they are being reported for?

Maybe due to the “Adolescence” drama being on TV? I think I read elsewhere that there was an increase in reports due to “incel” ideology.

Except the child referred in that particular example was Muslim, and was probably referred for suspected Islamic extremism rather than far right.

The number of referrals from the community as well as friends and family fell by 25 and 7 per cent respectively.
It would be interesting to know the number of referrals made by mosques and communities.