The institutional culture of the university is reshaping the everyday instincts of frontline police
Two-tier policing has become a familiar term used for the widespread suspicion that police in the UK apply inconsistent standards to different groups – a pattern often seen as symptomatic of bias or favouritism in the exercise of authority.
It is difficult to deny that such a pattern of policing exists. Take two recent examples. Montgomery Toms, a self-styled “freedom campaigner,” turned up at the London Pride march with a sign on which the trans flag was emblazoned, accompanied by the words “= mental illness”. This one-man counter-protest — for Pride itself, lest we forget, is a protest — was quickly dealt with by the Metropolitan Police through arrest and the imposition of a three-month exclusion order from the City of Westminster.
Just a few weeks later, when protests by local residents kicked off outside a hotel housing migrants in Epping, Essex Police took a very different approach to counter-protests. A reasonably large group of Stand Up to Racism activists were escorted by police from the tube station to the hotel, in order to facilitate their “lawful right to protest.” When things predictably became, in the words of the old East End, a little tasty, the police bussed the counter-protesters back to the station. You don’t need to agree with Toms or Stand Up to Racism to see the double standard.
One could find hundreds of similar examples. Each time this happens, a sizable number of social media users and many on the right-hand side of the media point out the discrepancy. There occasionally follows a denial by police and governing politicians that anything untoward or unfair is happening. Rinse and repeat. What is missing from this tedious repetition is a clear understanding that these discrepancies will continue to occur with monotonous regularity, and why they are bound to happen.
Occasionally, someone might suggest that the police are “captured” — or that groups such as Stonewall, delivering training to police forces, are to blame. But to grasp how deeply this pattern is becoming embedded, we need to take a closer look at how the police are now trained and professionalised in England and Wales. It is in the Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship (PCDA) that the ideological outlook is most explicitly formed.
Degree Apprenticeships in the UK are work-based training programmes that combine paid employment with university study, leading to a full bachelor’s or master’s award. Unlike traditional students, degree apprentices are full employees of a sponsoring organisation, which works in cahoots with the university to shape and deliver their training. The programme blends work-based learning — where credits are awarded for practical experience and reflective practice — with classroom-based academic study. Taught modules are provided by a recognised academic institution, typically a post-92 or redbrick university, and may be delivered either on campus or online. You can now undertake a degree apprenticeship in such varied professions as Chartered Management, Social Work, Veterinary Nursing, or even Golf Course Management.
The PCDA was formally launched in 2018, becoming the standard entry route for all new police officers without a degree from 1 January 2020 in England and Wales, under the Policing Education Qualifications Framework (PEQF) developed by the College of Policing. Since its formal rollout, the PCDA has produced approximately 15,000 officers — now accounting for around 10 per cent of the total force, and a far higher share of new constables. It is already reshaping the culture of frontline policing, and its influence will only grow with each recruitment cycle.
The PCDA follows the usual degree apprenticeship model, combining theoretical modules with work-based learning, all aligned to the College’s national curriculum. Recruits study core subjects such as ethics, law, policing diverse communities, safeguarding, investigation, and evidence-based practice, alongside operational duties. Academic credits are awarded for on-the-job performance, reflective writing, and formal assessments, culminating in a research project and End-Point Assessment in the final year. It is within these theoretical modules that we must look to understand how this training will entrench two-tier policing.
This content is often presented not as a set of contested frameworks, but as the normative or foundational lens through which all analysis must proceed
In the university, the taught modules are delivered by Criminology or closely related departments — such as Sociology or Social Policy — which shape the intellectual framework of the programme. These subject areas within UK Higher Education tend to be among the most radical, in terms of being left-leaning, in the sector. A report by the Adam Smith Institute — Lackademia: Why Do Academics Lean Left? – found that “the social sciences – especially sociology, cultural anthropology and social psychology — are among the subject areas generally found to have the lowest representation of right-wing and conservative academics.” Syllabuses in Criminology departments frequently feature Critical Race Theory, Queer theory, decolonial perspectives, and Marxist approaches to crime and justice. This content is often presented not as a set of contested frameworks, but as the normative or foundational lens through which all analysis must proceed. Whilst it is not easy to get hold of the syllabus of any of the PCDAs delivered across England and Wales, it is reasonable to assume that what appears under such innocuous titles as “Understanding the area(s) of criminology and crime prevention” and “Ethics, integrity and professionalism on the force” (Leeds Trinity) or “Policing Communities” and “Understanding Vulnerability” (Anglia Ruskin) is chock-full of the customary provender of these disciplines.
In this way, police apprentices learn, alongside their on-the-job training, that professionalism entails integrating insights from Critical Race Theory, Queer theory, and decolonial perspectives into their work. Consequently, a post on social media looks very different to someone trained to believe that words can constitute violence. When encountering a protest in support of Palestine, officers have been equipped to interpret the Israel–Palestine conflict through a settler-colonial lens. A Trans Pride march might be approached with an understanding shaped by queering. When it comes to migrants, a police officer’s education ensures an emphasis on historical power dynamics, colonial legacies, and systemic inequality. Faced with white English protesters outside a migrant hotel, officers are taught to frame the situation in terms of white privilege.
This training helps explain why officers, confronted with a Facebook post, may treat it as a higher priority than burglary. It clarifies why police will continue to respond to incidents such as Monty Toms’ trans protest or Stand Up to Racism’s arrival in Epping with what they might regard as a nuanced understanding of historical injustice and structural oppression. In this framing, arresting someone like Toms may appear a proportionate response to behaviour perceived as reinforcing harmful hierarchies, while escorting Stand Up to Racism activists is seen as facilitating resistance to far-right racism. The additional nuance — that Toms has the same legal right to protest as anyone else, or that Stand Up to Racism might harbour troublemakers in their ranks — was not included in the list of approved graduate competencies.
You might reply that individual officers, despite the indoctrination, can surely still use their common sense. They cannot all have entered the force as left-leaning ideologues. But this underestimates the lengths to which academics in these disciplines will go to enforce ideological conformity. I’ve known more than one graduate with a story of how it became clear that a decent grade would be elusive unless an essay reached the required conclusions – or unless their demographic tracking included which gender a respondent was “assigned at birth”. The pressure not to fail often outweighs the pressure to stay true to your own beliefs. In the PCDA context, this results not only in a display of ideological compliance on campus, but in an embedded understanding that advancement in the profession depends on staying in line with seminar learning. We can also presume that officers police one another, ensuring they each conform with what they’ve been taught to regard as professional thinking. As this generation becomes more embedded in the force, it is likely they will apply the same expectations to their older, non-PCDA colleagues — subtly reshaping the norms of policing from within.
Prior to degree apprenticeships, new recruits were trained under the Initial Police Learning and Development Programme (IPLDP), introduced in 2005. This combined a shorter classroom-based induction with on-the-job learning and a two-year probation. It replaced the older 31-week foundation course delivered at police colleges. Heaven knows, the colleges needed to be replaced. The infamous 2003 BBC Panorama documentary The Secret Policeman — filmed at the Bruche National Training Centre in Warrington — exposed frequent racist language, attitudes, and behaviour among recruits. This included jokes about lynching Black people, open admiration for the BNP, and a broader culture of homophobia and casual prejudice. The resulting furore directly contributed to calls for reform in police training and a greater emphasis on diversity and ethics. Thus have we arrived, on pathways paved with the best of intentions, at the current university-delivered model.
Yet if the aim was to redress the problem of police bias, we are merely replacing one set of unacceptable prejudices with another. Whoever thought it wise to entrust the training of a force that ought to police without fear or favour to some of the most ideologically possessed academics in the country must either have been wholly unaware of what goes on in UK universities or known exactly what they were doing. Either way, until that training is removed from the hands of ideologues and returned to those who value a genuinely broad and plural range of perspectives, and who understand that the law must apply equally to all, the problem of two-tier policing will persevere and flourish. Reform, in setting out their law and order agenda, have promised 30,000 extra police officers. But if they are PCDA-trained officers, they will not be the kind anyone yearning for a return to old-fashioned community policing is likely to welcome.
