Radicalisation work in schools suffers from two opposite failures, and I have seen both up close. The first is treating it as so sensitive that it never gets taught properly, leaving pupils to learn about extremism from the internet, which is rather like leaving water safety to the sea. The second is teaching it as a lesson about other people, other communities, other kinds of family, which is both wrong on the evidence and quietly corrosive, because the referral data is unambiguous: radicalisation in Britain today cuts across every background, with extreme right-wing cases making up a large share of Channel referrals, a persistent rise in young people drawn to violence-obsessed online subcultures with no coherent ideology at all, and school-age children now a substantial proportion of counter-terrorism arrests. The honest framing, and the one this lesson uses, is that radicalisation is a grooming process that targets need, not background, and every pupil in the room has needs.
That framing also connects this lesson to the rest of the series on purpose. The mechanics you taught in the grooming and county lines packs, attention, belonging, isolation, escalation, are the same mechanics here with a different product. Pupils who have done those lessons will recognise the shape within minutes, and you should let them, because recognition is the protective skill.
By the end of the lesson pupils should be able to explain what radicalisation is and how it works as a process, recognise the push and pull factors that make a person vulnerable, describe how online content and algorithms accelerate the journey, understand what Channel is and that it is help rather than punishment, and know what to do if they are worried about themselves or a friend.
Schools are specified authorities under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, carrying the duty to have due regard to the need to prevent people being drawn into terrorism. The Prevent duty guidance 2023 and KCSIE 2026 frame this squarely as safeguarding: staff notice, DSLs and Prevent leads assess, and where a person needs support, the Channel programme provides a voluntary, multi-agency package built around mentoring and addressing the underlying needs. Channel is not a criminal process, participation is consensual, and most people referred receive no counter-terrorism intervention at all because other needs, mental health, belonging, family, turn out to be the real story. Say that to pupils explicitly, because the belief that telling an adult gets a friend arrested is the single biggest barrier to early help, and it is false.
The radicalised young people I encountered had one thing in common, and it was not ideology. It was a gap: a bereavement, a humiliation, an isolation, a hunger to matter. The ideology arrived later, as packaging. Online recruiters are extremely good at finding the gap, and the modern pathway is faster and stranger than the old model: algorithm-served grievance content, meme culture that walks provocations forward one edgy step at a time, private channels where the real material lives, and communities that reward escalation with status. Some of the most concerning cases now have no settled ideology at all, just an accelerating obsession with violence itself. The practical upshot for a classroom is that you are not teaching pupils to spot a type of person. You are teaching them to spot a process, in content they are already seeing.
Give pupils the two-sided model. Push factors make a person available: isolation, grievance, identity crisis, low self-worth, family difficulty, experiences of racism or rejection. Pull factors make the group attractive: belonging, purpose, status, adventure, a simple story with a villain, and the feeling of being one of the few who see the truth. Neither list is exotic; every teenager alive has felt items from both. What converts vulnerability into a pathway is a recruiter or a content ecosystem meeting the need, and this is where the algorithm deserves its own five minutes: recommendation systems learn that outrage holds attention, so a curious click on borderline content trains the feed to serve stronger material, and within weeks a bored 13-year-old's feed can look like a curated pipeline. Pupils find this genuinely interesting rather than preachy, because it is about the machinery, not their morals.
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 5 mins | Starter, myth or fact. Radicalisation only affects one community: myth, and the referral data says so. People choose extremism because they are evil: myth, it is a grooming process. Telling an adult gets your friend arrested: myth, and this one matters most. Set the factual floor before anything else. |
| 10 mins | What radicalisation is. Define it plainly: a process by which someone comes to support increasingly extreme views, and in the worst cases violence, usually because someone or something exploited a need. Map it onto the grooming arc pupils already know from earlier packs: attention, belonging, isolation, escalation. |
| 10 mins | Push and pull. Work through the model above, with pupils generating examples before you fill gaps. The teaching point to land: vulnerability is universal, which is why "it couldn't be me or my mates" is the most dangerous sentence in this subject. |
| 10 mins | The online pathway. The algorithm mechanism, meme-by-meme normalisation, and the move from open platforms to private channels. Do not show real extremist content or name active groups and influencers; teach the shape, not the brands. |
| 15 mins | Scenarios. Groups take the handout scenarios, the friend whose jokes have stopped being jokes, the group chat that keeps getting darker, the older online friend flattering someone into "forbidden knowledge", and answer: what has changed, what need is being met, what would you actually do? Draw out the realistic options: talk to the friend without lecturing, step back from the content, and tell an adult early, precisely because early means help rather than trouble. |
| 10 mins | Channel, help routes, plenary. Explain Channel accurately as voluntary, supportive and multi-agency, introduce ACT Early as the route for worried friends and family, and close with the exit ticket: one sign you would now notice, and one adult you would tell. |
This lesson is itself a noticing exercise, so brief your DSL and Prevent lead that it is running. What you are listening for is not political opinion, which pupils are entitled to hold and test loudly, but the markers the Prevent guidance actually describes: dehumanising language about a group, fixation on violence or weapons, recited content that sounds sourced rather than thought, sudden isolation from old friends paired with intense online activity, and above all a change in the individual pupil against their own baseline. One edgy comment in a discussion is a teaching moment, handled in the room. A pattern, or a disclosure about material a pupil is consuming or being sent, goes to the DSL the same day, recorded factually. Never accuse, never label a child an extremist, and never make the referral process sound like reporting a crime, because if pupils believe that, the early disclosures this whole lesson exists to produce will simply stop.
Handle current events with care. If a recent attack or a live conflict is in the news, acknowledge feelings, allow questions, and keep the lesson on process rather than adjudicating the event itself. And be alert to pupils for whom this topic is personal: a family member involved in extremism, a community that has been targeted, or a child who has been called an extremist as a slur. The lesson must feel safe for them or it fails.
Radicalisation is grooming with a different product, and the pattern is recognisable: attention, belonging, isolation, escalation. It can reach anyone, because it targets needs everyone has. The algorithm is not your friend, and a feed that keeps getting angrier is a feed training you. Channel is help, not handcuffs, and worrying about a friend is a reason to speak, not to stay loyal and silent. The earlier the conversation, the more it looks like support and the less it looks like anything else.
For pupils: any trusted adult in school, Childline on 0800 1111, and for anyone worried that someone they care about is being drawn towards extremism, ACT Early at actearly.uk with its advice line on 0800 011 3764, run by specialists and geared to help, not punish. In an emergency, 999. For staff: your DSL and Prevent lead in the first instance, your local authority Prevent education officer, and the DfE's Educate Against Hate resources for classroom follow-up. Where material seen in school appears to be terrorist content, it can be reported through gov.uk's online terrorist material reporting tool, and your DSL should preserve rather than forward it. The police response to a school's Prevent concern is a safeguarding response, made jointly with partners, exactly as Working Together 2026 intends.