Why can't Ofsted stop rise in 'illegal schools'?

A report that children are being taught "misinformation and quackery" at an "illegal school" based in a "grimy former nightclub" in Greater Manchester has reignited the debate on whether enough is being done to regulate alternative education providers.

Ofsted told the BBC it is "urgently investigating" the claims in The Times that an alternative education provider has been promoting conspiracy theories to children.

What did the commentators say?

Teachers at the institution, which is called UniversallKidz, believe that the dinosaurs "never existed" and that the government is teaming up with the World Economic Forum (WEF) to depopulate and enslave the world – a conspiracy known as the "great reset theory" – wrote Tom Ball, who went undercover for the broadsheet.

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Children are educated in foraging, self-defence and natural remedies to "survive and defy this supposed plot against humanity", he added. A teacher said the authorities are "going to force a famine on us and we will be eating each other", so the children will have to "find their own food when the s*** hits the fan".

In a history lesson children were told that the reality TV show "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here" was commissioned to show viewers famous people eating cockroaches so it "doesn't look mad" when Bill Gates and the WEF "have their way" and force everyone to do the same. Leaflets were made available that stated that Covid vaccines, climate science and 5G were all tools the authorities use to subdue the population.

This is not the first time such an establishment has been reported. A SchoolsWeek investigation at the end of last year found "thousands of children are being educated in unregistered alternative provision where teachers require neither qualifications nor criminal record checks."

There is "very little oversight" of home-schooled children under current legislation, wrote Ball, and Ofsted inspectors do not have the power to force their way onto the premises of suspected illegal schools or seize incriminating materials.

An institution can be regarded as illegal only if it is providing "full-time education" but that term is only defined as "all or substantially all of a child's education", which is tricky for Ofsted inspectors to prove.

When Ofsted set up a task force in 2016 to investigate the issue it believed there were only 24 illegal schools but now there are thought to be hundreds. The number of home-schooled children has increased rapidly, from 60,000 in 2018 to 86,000 in 2023.

Last summer, The Times claimed that children at a school in Sussex were being taught archery, swordplay and boxing by former members of the far right who believe they are "at war" with the state. The children were told that that the US government knew in advance about the September 11 attacks.

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), which recently published a report into unregulated alternative education providers, was told of settings "where children were allowed to drive and take knives out", reported Schools Week. In another case, an alternative provider was "crossing the line to child labour" when pupils were "supposedly gaining work experience with a mechanic".

Ladan Ratcliffe, who runs UniversallKidz, reportedly told Ball that she encourages parents to lie to local authorities by claiming that their children are being home educated while in fact sending them to her school.

Confronted with The Times's findings, Ratcliffe denied that Universallkidz was a school, insisting that it "only operates around 11 hours a week", and describing it as "a parent-child community initiative". She said its "learning experiences" are "based on natural law of the universe and ancient knowledge that has been omitted from mainstream education".

What next?

Ofsted's chief inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, described the findings as "highly alarming, but sadly not surprising". Ofsted said "weaknesses in the current legal system continue to hamper our efforts to deal with unregistered schools".

He added that the 2022 Schools Bill would have handed Ofsted additional powers to investigate and close down illegal schools, but that legislation was dropped.