The Prevention Pyramid

GO! Royal Athenaeum Antwerp

GO! Royal Athenaeum Antwerp, a school with pupils representing more than 60 nationalities.

Type of Organisation: Governmental institution

The Prevention Pyramid of Johan Declerck

The prevention pyramid of Johan Declerck is an instrument that can be used to orient and achieve insights into how to optimise one’s policy for the prevention of radicalisation.

It consists of five levels. Each level is as important as the one that lies above.

The five levels can be divided into two parts. Prevention focuses on the broad wellbeing of people and broader society (levels 0, 1 and 2, being the environment, living circumstances and general prevention). The upper levels (3 and 4) are the more urgent, problem-oriented and are geared towards immediate preventive measures. Every level in the pyramid is essential in order to secure an effective policy to prevent radicalisation.

Following the attacks in Paris (November 2015) and Brussels (March 2016) the Flemish educational system, GO!, developed a priority action-plan based on the Prevention Pyramid. Some schools felt the need to immediately address level 4 (the problem-oriented approach), for example, by increasing security measures such as surveillance (CCTV) and punishment. During trainings, we explained the importance of acting on all the prevention levels even though it is understandable that people may wish to focus only on the 4th level, one should not forget the lower levels when writing up a sound and effective policy. The lower, broader levels are in fact essential for ensuring a stable and peaceful society.

In the GO! the lower levels are inherent to the core educational project, with the baseline of “learning to live together”. A focus shift has also been introduced to include active citizenship as a key aim. Through trainings, different RAN meetings and networking this vision is being spread throughout Flanders, Belgium and Europe.

The Manifesto for Education published by the RAN focuses on four areas (students, teachers, partners, governments). In times of terrorism, it is essential that every level of the Prevention Pyramid is applied to these four areas. The Prevention Pyramid is used at a micro-, meso- and macroscale. Students, teachers and external partners can use this as a frame to innovate the current policy.

THE PREVENTION PYRAMID

The Prevention Pyramid consists of five, distinct levels. The difference lies in the degree of problem-orientation.

This good practice was developed during the period of problematic Islamic radicalisation and in follow-up to the war in Syria and departing youth. Today, however, we live in a hyper-polarised society and polarisation and radicalisation have become a many-headed monster: in addition to proselytising Islamist Salafism, we notice extreme right-wing extremism, the woke debate that is fierce in our schools, LGBTQ thinking, anti-women thinking, climate activists, etc.

Precisely because of this recent evolution, the training offer has been updated and this good practice is integrated into a general basic training 'prevention of radicalisation and polarisation'. Here, we examine how radical thinking comes about, when it is problematic and when we speak of extremism. We reflect on the different forms that exist and what the associated characteristics are. We also look at the challenges this poses in practice and provide information on how front-line workers, local authorities, teachers, youth workers, welfare workers, etc. can deal with these challenges. This model is integrated into this training.

A new training offer will be rolled out within all GO! schools. In the previous school year 2022-2023, tailor-made formations were provided. During this school year 2023- 2024, the key persons who were activated in 2015 will be reactivated.

We use the Prevention Pyramid of Johan Declerck in different trainings at different schools all over Europe. We assist principals in writing out a new policy. We implement the Prevention Pyramid in different RAN meetings.

We implemented the Prevention Pyramid in the RAN manual for democratic school ethos.

A video about the school’s educational project is available here.

Address

GO! Royal Athenaeum Antwerp

Franklin Rooseveltplaats 11
2060 Antwerp, Belgium

Contact person: Karin Heremans,
School principal – policy coördinator GO! & Ran expertpool
Telephone: +32 497 44 78 37 (Karin)
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