Keele Research Repository

This paper looks empirically at how the UK’s policy of securitisation within education impacts on the meso-level space of cultural ethos and pedagogy within two majority non-white secondary schools and one majority non-white further education college. It does so primarily by documenting how British Values and Prevent policies enabled through the British Government’s Counter-Terrorism and Security Act have impacted on institutional ethos both in terms of objective structures and staff subjectivities. It is argued here that the security-curriculum ensemble is a recognition of this meso-level space by central government and represents a development in moves made to restrict access and agency within this space, and even to circumscribe this space through symbolic violence. This paper concludes by urging school/college leaders to exercise their agency at the meso-level; to recognise this space as a place for democratisation and decolonisation as an equitable alternative to enforced cultural ‘upgrading’ and in(ex)clusion presented through securitisation policy that is in reality an instrument of symbolic domination.