Review of Educational Initiatives in Counter-Extremism Internationally: What works?

There have been a considerable number of conferences run by international agencies and academic institutions to explore the role of education in Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) or Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE). These often result in ‘calls for action’ or the need for more research, or may generate collections of articles that give different viewpoints. These collections are useful but can be fragmented. What we do not have is an overview of what educational institutions are actually doing in different countries in a sustained way to tackle violent extremism, and whether there is any evidence of the impact of these activities. This review begins such a task.

• It first has a brief section defining the terms in use (CVE, PVE). It then moves to an overview of how the issues have been taken up by different international organisations, and the programmes that they have.
• Next, the typology of types of intervention under different headings briefly describes a range of projects in use, looking at their main basis and rationale, whether directly or indirectly tackling VE, and the extent of evaluation.
• The ensuing section tackles evaluation, in terms of the difficult issues in evaluating CVE and what measures the various initiatives have used.
• The final section summarises the learning on ‘what works better’ (not best, as this is too absolute) in the design and execution of any programme or policy on CVE for educational institutions.