Changes to how universities are expected to comply with the government’s counter-terrorism efforts will be revealed next month, as institutions grapple with a growing threat from right-wing extremism alongside other forms of radicalisation.
The Office for Students (OfS) is expected to share further details on its updates to the Prevent monitoring framework in July, after figures released last week revealed that referrals to the counter-terrorism scheme from within universities increased by nearly 50 per cent last year.
The latest OfS data also revealed that the number of cases linked to right-wing radicalisation reached the highest level ever, with 45 cases escalated to the Prevent lead in 2024-25, compared with 30 instances reported in 2023-24.
Even though referrals linked to right-wing radicalisation remain low overall, Nigel Copsey, a Teesside University academic specialising in histories of fascism and anti-fascism, said Prevent monitoring was a blunt tool when it came to registering an increasingly “diffuse” and pervasive group of ideologies.
“Right-wing extremism on UK campuses is numerically tiny,” Copsey said. “The Prevent figures are vanishingly small – roughly one case per 60,000 students.
