EdLaw
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
| Document | Covers |
|---|---|
| PREVENT-DUTY.md | CTSA 2015 sections 26 and 29 |
Enforcement
Secretary of State directions (s 30); Ofsted inspects Prevent compliance as part of safeguarding.
Licence
The corpus reproduces the consolidated text of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, sections 26 and 29 from legislation.gov.uk. The legislation.gov.uk footer (read 2026-10-01 on legislation.gov.uk) says: "All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated." and "© Crown and database right". The text is Crown copyright, which is not an exclusion from copyright, so the label is open-licence.
The Open Government Licence v3.0 (read 2026-10-01) says: "You are free to: copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information; adapt the Information; exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially". Its conditions: "acknowledge the source of the Information in your product or application by including or linking to any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence", and, where no statement is specified, "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0."; and, under Non-endorsement, the licence "does not grant you any right to use the Information in a way that suggests any official status or that the Information Provider and/or Licensor endorse you or your use of the Information."
Conditions, and how this corpus meets them:
- Acknowledge the source: each provision carries a
{.meta}provenance line naming legislation.gov.uk with the consolidation date, and Sources links the publication. Attribution statement: "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0." (licence). - Non-endorsement: the corpus does not claim official status or endorsement by the Crown or The National Archives.
- Changes: the OGL does not require changes to be marked; the selection, layout and added anchors are described in Meta.
- Exemptions: no personal data, logos, crests or Royal Arms are reproduced.
The Home Office Prevent duty guidance listed in Sources is cited, not reproduced; it is also Crown copyright published on gov.uk under the same licence.
Related
- KCSIE — operationalises the duty in schools
- DfE filtering & monitoring standards — the technical expectations