A Year 6 pupil who recites Nazi ideology amid Hitler salutes, youngsters who dress up as the shooters in the Columbine massacre and a Year 3 schoolboy who professes a love for Vladimir Putin.

Childish stupidity or the seeds of something perhaps more unsettling?

All come from Kent’s classrooms and all have been referred to the country’s first line of defence against extremism and potential terrorism - Prevent.

Because our county is one of the most high-risk in the country - and it’s far-right extremism which is a rising concern.

In 2022, Kent laid dubious claim to being the scene of the one and only terrorist attack in the UK. That saw Andrew Leak, a man rebelling against asylum-seekers, hurl a petrol bomb at an immigration processing centre in Dover before taking his own life.

In addition, we have seen the likes of Chatham’s Sally Jones - dubbed the White Widow - become the world’s most wanted female terrorist after fleeing to Syria, with her son, to join Islamic State (IS). Then there was Rochester’s Lewis Ludlow - convicted in 2019 of plotting to plant a bomb outside a Disney store on London’s Oxford Street.

To that high-profile list we can add Khalid Masood. Born in Dartford and raised in Tunbridge Wells, he drove a vehicle into crowds at Westminster before stabbing to death a police officer.

The threat, then, is real - and Prevent’s aim is to nip it in the bud at the earliest stage possible. Which almost always starts in our classrooms.

Prevent was first launched back in 2007 in response to the July 7 bombings in London. But it had its roots in government strategy drawn up after 2001’s 9/11 attacks on New York and a shift in the ambition of those opposed to the West.

For the last nine years, those working in education, healthcare, local authorities and the police have a duty to report any suspicion of radicalisation to the Prevent team. They have their eyes and ears, it is far to say, everywhere.

The Kent Prevent team are based in the offices of Kent County Council in Maidstone.

It operates quietly in the background - looking into all referrals which come its way, ascertaining if the threat of what our children are doing is to be taken seriously and responding accordingly. The vast majority of children showing worrying signs will be handled by additional support from schools and other support services. The most concerning will be escalated.

In charge of the Kent and Medway Prevent team is a man no stranger to the impact of terrorism.

When Nick Wilkinson was young, his father carried a gun “24 hours a day” but would not reveal why. He would go on to learn his father was a member of the Special Branch - and the personal protection officer for Ian Gow.

Gow, a former Army officer, was a prominent MP for Eastbourne and friend of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He was assassinated when the IRA planted a bomb under his car just down the road from where Mr Wilkinson lived.

Following his father into the police, when he was in his early 20s, he was on duty outside Brighton’s seafront The Grand hotel on the night of October 12, 1984, when the IRA attempted to blow up Thatcher and her cabinet while they prepared for the Conservative Party conference taking place in the nearby Brighton Centre.

“Some 25 years later,” he says, “I was the chief police officer commanding the Labour government conference in Brighton and briefing the Prime Minister around the terrorist threat.”

Now 62, he served within the police force for 31 years - retiring in 2012 when he reached the rank of assistant chief constable in Sussex. In addition to his Prevent duties, his remit also includes Serious Organised Crime.

In short, he knows his onions.

Since then, he has worked tirelessly within a variety of key roles within Contest - the UK’s over-arching counter-terrorism strategy.

He explains: “The Contest strategy consists of the four Ps: Prevent, Protect, Prepare and Pursue.

“Pursue is the far end that I used to be involved in, so that's the police and the security services, investigating terrorism offences and individuals.

“But at the very early stages is the Prevent process. Prevent is about early intervention and safeguarding.”

Key indicators they look out for include aggressive language and behaviour with racist undertones. He mentions a Year 4 child recently referred who was using “frequent racist language” - something “very unusual” at such an age.

To that end, his team - which includes several Home Office-funded officers given Kent’s high-risk status - have provided training for thousands of those who now have an obligation to be on the look-out for troubling behaviour patterns. In just the last three months of last year, they gave guidance to more than 1,500 staff and 500 young people across a variety of settings. In total, his team have taught some 20,000 people across the county over the last four years.

This starts with the very youngest children to those in the final stages of their education journey.

“One of the elements of Prevent is where the individual is considered to be what we call susceptible to radicalisation. They are then referred under what they call a Prevent referral process.

“After going through a range of safeguarding and checks it eventually, potentially, comes through to the multi-agency Channel Panel, which I also chair.”

For those who have reached this stage - and the vast majority don’t - a strategy is then drawn up as to how best support the individual concerned.

“What I would say,” the former police officer says, “is we get tiny numbers of primary school children who come to our Channel panel.

“The majority of children are in the 13-17 age group.

“I can't give you details of numbers,” he explains, “because some of this is sensitive information, but we are one of the busiest Channel panels in the whole country.

“The highest referrals are from education. And then we get referrals from local authorities, from the police, from the health service, from probation and on occasions we get them from friends and family.”

So just why is Kent so busy?

“We are considered a high-risk area because of the challenges we face in Kent,” he adds.

“The highest threat, nationally, is around Islamist extremism. Daesh [IS] still has a footprint internationally. Individuals who become self-initiated are then inspired by that very aggressive form of Islamist extremism.

“But I must stress none of this is about religion.

“What we have as a growing threat is the extreme right wing.

“For us in Kent, in 2022 the only terrorist attack in the UK was at Dover. And that was inspired by an individual who was supporting the cultural nationalist side of the far-right.

“Because of our geography, we are always in the news around issues such as asylum and immigration - particularly small boat crossings.

“We've got a lot of people who will post online around migration and, unfortunately, because of our geography that falls into the concerns that we've got locally.

“What we've also got is something which transcends all of that; the online threat.

“It gives individuals, wherever, the opportunity to fuel their hate and their prejudice and their bias. It gives the ability to young people, particularly, who are spending a lot of time online, to be drawn into that world.”

He reels off a list of social media networks - such as extreme image message boards 8Chan and 4Chan. Not to mention trawling the dark web or chat options within video games. It is that - rather than from learned behaviour from parents - which is fuelling the current threat.

“We so often hear parents say ‘Well, it's only a smartphone’, or ‘It's only the internet’. They don't know what their youngsters in their families are engaging in.”

Yet the driving force behind Prevent - and Wilkinson’s personal aim - is to not let anything slip through that could later come to haunt both it and the nation.

Prevent has certainly been controversial - particularly among the Muslim community which claims it unfairly stigmatised them.

“The anti-Prevent lobby,” says Wilkinson, “I'll always say back to them: ‘Tell me something which is better.’

“Why would you not want to stop the terrorist attack? It is another form of safeguarding.

“We know individuals can get groomed online alongside other risks like county lines gangs and sexual exploitation. I'm doing what I can do to safeguard either children or vulnerable adults.”