language: en · status: in-force · last checked: 2026-09-06

UK — The Prevent duty (Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, s. 26)

The statutory duty behind a large part of UK schools' web-filtering expectations.

Applicability to EdTech

• The duty (section 26): specified authorities — schools, colleges and childcare providers via Schedule 6 — must have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism in the exercise of their functions; they must also have regard to Home Office guidance (section 29).
• Vendor consequence: the Prevent guidance for schools expects online-safety policies and filtering that limit access to terrorist and extremist material — this is the statutory root of the risk assessment that KCSIE para 174 ties filtering appropriateness to. Products used in UK schools must not undermine, and should work within, school filtering.

Contents

Enforcement

Secretary of State directions (s 30); Ofsted inspects Prevent compliance as part of safeguarding.

Related

• KCSIE — operationalises the duty in schools
• DfE filtering & monitoring standards — the technical expectations

Sources

• legislation.gov.uk — CTSA 2015
• Home Office — Prevent duty guidance

Meta

Section text is reproduced verbatim from the consolidated Act on legislation.gov.uk via the shared CLML converter by tools/legislation-gov-uk/build_prevent.py; verify re-checks every source text node.