Celebrating modern Britain

At Activate Learning, we pride ourselves on celebrating our diverse community of staff and students, with its many different ethnicities and religions.

We think that all students should feel confident about who they are and comfortable in expressing their views. We strive to create an environment where students can discuss real life issues and form well considered opinions.

We want our students to feel safe and to be tolerant towards all cultures and religions.

What is the PREVENT strategy?

The PREVENT strategy is a UK Government strategy designed to protect young people at risk of being radicalised. To help us identify when someone may be being radicalised, we look at a number of factors, such as:

• Sudden change in their appearance (for example, style of clothing)
• High absence rate from college, without a clear reason for this
• Losing interest in friends or activities not associated with a particular ideology, with their behaviour becoming focused on an extreme idea or cause.
• Possessing or being associated with material or symbols associated with an extremist cause, communicating with suspected extremists or visiting websites and social media sites associated with extremism.

Activate Learning fully endorses the PREVENT strategy that:

'Helps to protect young people and vulnerable adults from extremist and violent views in the same ways that they help to safeguard young people and vulnerable adults from drugs, gang violence or alcohol. Their purpose must be to protect young people from harm and to ensure that they are taught in a way that is consistent with the law and our values. Colleges have an important role to play in PREVENT, particularly in ensuring balanced debate as well as freedom of speech. They also have a clear responsibility to exercise their duty of care and to protect the welfare of their students. Staff can identify and offer support to students who may be drawn into extremism.'

We take seriously our duty to protect the safety and wellbeing of our students, including protecting them from activities and links with organisations that may endanger themselves and others, and protecting students from radicalisation and extremism, under safeguarding and child protection legislation and under the Equality Act.

Keeping students safe

Students at our colleges are given information on staying safe: appropriate behaviour, both online and offline. We do follow up and refer any concerning behaviour, working closely with agencies, such as the police and social care.

Our Safeguarding team is available to discuss any issue you may be concerned about. Please contact safe@activatelearning.ac.uk.

It's all about respect

We expect everyone in Activate Learning to behave responsibly and to respect other people's rights. This is why our students sign the code of conduct when they enrol and take part in equality and diversity initiatives.

We are committed to freedom of expression within the law. We have a duty as an educational body to protect health, morals, rights and reputations and prevent disorder or crime. We will not provide a platform for speakers or organisations that promote violence, religious hatred, or racist, sexist or homophobic views, contrary to our equality and diversity policy and likely to be unlawful.

Join the big debate

A priority for us is not only to develop you through teaching and learning, but also to:

• Develop your personal skills
• Strengthen your critical thinking skills
• Get you ready for employment by demonstrating behaviour that industry employers will seek when interviewing potential candidates

We have developed our “Big Debate” curriculum, with opportunities to discuss and debate hot topics such as: the EU referendum and what leaving the EU means for us, the impact of bullying and how prevalent this is in today’s society and radicalisation – what is it and how are people drawn in to take part in criminal or extreme behaviours by other people?

This will help make you a well-rounded individual and to make informed choices in life, so you can identify when you are being confronted with ideology that may challenge our values.