Spy on students to keep radicals at bay, cleaners and cooks told

CLEANERS and catering staff are being trained by universities to eavesdrop on students at risk of being radicalised by terrorists, it has emerged.

In a bid to prevent students from falling prey to extremists, several universities are broadening their training to include staff who they believe will pick up on tell-tale signs missed by their academic peers.

They include London South Bank University and the Open University, which revealed that they had developed new online training schemes for security, cleaning contractors and catering

‘There’s never been a more important time for us to come together and ensure extremism is challenged’

staff. It is understood that university leaders have widened their scope because students with extremist sympathies are more likely to disclose telling information in canteens, cafés and libraries – rather than conventional spaces such as lecture theatres.

It comes amid growing concern among campaigners and government ministers, who have warned that university campuses are becoming hotbeds of Islamist radicalisation.

Details of the new training regimes were published yesterday by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, which found that universities were making strong progress in implementing the Government’s anti-radicalisation programme, known as Prevent. However, the spread of Prevent training to non-academic staff likely to anger many students.

It follows an outcry at King’s College London earlier this year, when university management were accused of treating students like “suspects” when it admitted to monitoring their emails.

Last year the University of Westminster faced protests by Muslim students when it installed CCTV cameras in prayer rooms, following the news that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) posterboy Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, was a recent graduate in information systems.

Whilst the university defended the decision on the grounds that it wanted to make students feel “secure”, the Students’ Union claimed that doing so had fostered a “lack of trust, some anger and frankly a degree of fear”.

Published yesterday, the report also revealed that London Metropolitan University – the alma mater of 19-yearold Tube bomb plotter Damon Smith – is now monitoring students’ internet use, including blocking access to extremist websites.

However, other universities were found to have resisted IT monitoring on the grounds that doing so would compromise “academic freedom” and encourage “censorship”.

The study, which is the first of its kind, found that 95 per cent of British universities had made “good progress” in fulfilling the duty, while just 15 institutions were told they needed to provide “further evidence” to meet Government requirements.

Commenting on the report, Jo Johnson, the universities minister, said: “There has never been a more important time for us to come together and ensure extremist ideologies are robustly challenged.” is