Exposed: the ‘illegal school’ teaching children conspiracy theories

In a community centre in Stockport a group of children stand holding hands in a circle with their eyes tightly shut. On the floor in front of them is a collection of crystal pyramids. “It might get a bit warm,” says their teacher, a self-styled shaman called Phil, who tells his students that the rocks can transmit energy into their bodies. “If you’ve got any injuries they might soon go away. These might start healing you.” It is 2.30pm on a Tuesday in January and these children should be in school. Unfortunately, however, they are in school.

For nearly a month I worked undercover as a teacher at Universallkidz, a suspected illegal school in Greater Manchester, alongside colleagues who believed that the dinosaurs never existed and viruses are not real; that aircraft vapours in the sky cause dementia and crystals could cure serious illness; and, most concerning of all, that the government was, in league with organisations such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) and wealthy businessmen, are covertly attempting to depopulate and enslave the world — a conspiracy known as the “great reset theory”.

If schools like Eton and Winchester were established to educate the future administrators of state, Universallkidz was set up with the very opposite purpose: it is a training ground for the resistance movement, where children are instructed in foraging, self-defence and natural remedies to survive and defy this supposed plot against humanity. “They won’t have to be woken up because they’ve never been asleep,” as one teacher called Red put it to me. “They’ll know how to find their own medicine, find their own food when the shit hits the fan. Because they are going to force a famine on us. Look at what they have been doing with farming. They are going to force a famine on us and we will be eating each other.”

The children, aged between eight and fourteen, are not taught the national curriculum. Instead they are taught a bespoke course that pays scant regard to facts and peddles misinformation and quackery. I saw them being taught that their bodies were made up of energy that ebbed and flowed according to whether or not they were telling the truth. In a history lesson, I saw the children being told by their teacher, Justine, that they would one day be eating cockroaches if “Klaus [Schwab, head of the WEF] and [Bill] Gates have their way … That’s why we’ve had I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here for X amount of years, to get us all into it. Isn’t it? So it doesn’t look as mad when they say ‘right it’s time you all start eating cockroach’.” They were also taught about Anne Frank’s diaries by Justine, who questioned their veracity, repeating — in a conversation with another teacher — a common antisemitic conspiracy.

Classes were held in a tumble-down Victorian mansion, which had until recently been a nightclub. In the hallway, leaflets were left lying around that stated that Covid-19 vaccines, climate science and 5G were all means by which the government is trying to subjugate the population. The leaflets concluded: “Resist! Defy! Do not comply!”

Parents taught to lie

Universallkidz goes to great lengths to conceal its activities. On its website, it describes itself as a provider of “holistic alternative education” that seeks to raise “autonomous” and “sovereign” young people. To education officials who might come asking questions, it presents as a support for home schooling parents. But to insiders, those members of the “awake” community for whom it serves, it is a school operating independently from any government bodies.

The school was set up more than three years ago by Ladan Ratcliffe, 60, a former teacher, and has since operated under the radar of local authorities and Ofsted, the schools inspectorate. In response to the Times findings, Ofsted has started an urgent investigation into Universallkidz.

Illegal schools — defined as institutions providing full-time education that are not registered with the Department for Education — often exploit the fact that there is very little oversight of home-schooled children under present legislation.

All children who attend Universallkidz are technically home schooled. Ratcliffe told me that she helps parents to remove their children from mainstream state education and then encourages them to lie to local authorities by claiming that their children are being home educated while in fact sending them to Universallkidz. Parents pay £30 a day for tuition.

Ofsted set up a task force in 2016 in response to growing concerns about the proliferation of illegal schools. Until that point inspectors had believed there were only 24 illegal schools; today there are thought to be hundreds. The vast majority of institutions prosecuted by Ofsted are religious schools that cater for ultra-orthodox Jewish and Muslim communities.

But in recent years inspectors have found a growing number of non-religious schools set up by people radicalised during the Covid-19 pandemic into an anti-state, and sometimes conspiratorial, ideology.

At the same time the number of home-schooled children has increased rapidly, from 60,000 in 2018 to 86,000 in 2023, according to most recent figures published by the government.

Last year The Times exposed another suspected illegal school, set up in Sussex three years ago by anti-vaccine activists and former members of the far right.

The reason for the rapid growth in the number of these schools is partly down to the weakness of legislation. Ofsted inspectors do not have the power to force their way onto the premises of suspected illegal schools or seize incriminating materials. There is no register for home schooled children in England.

Imprecise wording of the legislation lends itself to exploitation, allowing schools to operate on the cusp of the law. For an institution to be deemed a illegal, it must be providing “full-time education” to five or more children or to one or more children who had special educational needs support while in mainstream schooling.

There is, however, no specific definition of “full-time education”, other than it being “all or substantially all of a child’s education”, which means that to prosecute Ofsted inspectors need to be able to show that the children are receiving the majority of their education in that place.

Hundreds of unregistered schools

Universallkidz had 13 pupils when I was there, although Ratcliffe told me it had previously had as many as 28. The school operates four days a week from 10am to 3.30pm. Not all the children go every day, but most go at least three days a week. Four go four days a week, including two of the children with special educational needs. Universallkidz operates out of a Stockport council-owned community centre room one day a week and from a former nightclub in Rusholme two days a week. For one day lessons are online.

Sir Martyn Oliver, Ofsted’s chief inspector, described the findings as “highly alarming, but sadly not surprising”.

“Over the last eight years, we have found hundreds of unregistered schools, operating in unsafe premises, led by unsuitable people, teaching children very little. We are urgently investigating this shocking case, but weaknesses in the current legal system continue to hamper our efforts to deal with unregistered schools.

“The 2022 Schools Bill would have given us additional powers to investigate and close down illegal schools, but that legislation was dropped. Without those powers, I remain concerned that thousands of children across England are still attending illegal schools.”

Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, said it is “frankly shocking that this school has been operating with impunity for so long and poisoning the minds of these young people”. She said that a Labour government would legislate without delay for a register of children not in school.

Asked to comment on the Times investigation, Ratcliffe denied that Universallkidz was a school, claiming that it “only operates around 11 hours a week”, and described it instead as “a parent-child community initiative”.

She denied that Universallkidz was training conspiracy theorists of the future, saying that “the learning experiences we provide are based on natural law of the universe and ancient knowledge that has been omitted from mainstream education”.

How I found them

Every Friday a group of middle-aged men with yellow placards gather on the street corner next to my flat in Manchester, telling anyone who will listen that the pandemic was a scam and vaccines killed people. They also hand out copies of The Light, a conspiracies-based publication. Occasionally I would pick one up to learn about the latest deranged theories. One day at the end of last year I noticed among the classified adverts that a qualified teacher was being sought for an unnamed “self-governing small community learning provision”. Reasoning that no credible educator could be looking for staff among the readership of The Light, I decided to apply.

Ratcliffe is a former teacher who worked in state education around Greater Manchester for more than 20 years before moving to China in 2016 to run an international school with her husband. She moved back to Britain in 2019 and set up Universallkidz in October 2020. The idea came to her at an anti-lockdown rally.

During the interviews I had for the role, Ratcliffe, who goes by the name “Ladan Universall”, told me that the purpose of the school was to “de-indoctrinate” pupils from “all the lies” that they are taught by “the system”. Aside from GCSE maths, which some of the older children were studying for, the school does not in any way engage with the national curriculum. Broadly, much of what is taught at the school falls into the category of what might be described as New Age, with classes including sacred drumming, moon cycles and homeopathy.

I was asked to teach the children the basic principles of traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy. These concepts are thousands of years old and remain a popular alternative medical practice. However, many of their core principles are without scientific basis. As part of the lessons in which the children were supposedly learning science, I was told to teach that humans are made of energy that flows between the organs along channels called meridians.

In another lesson, in which I was working alongside a teacher called Leyli, she taught the children that our energy is linked to the subconscious and that when we lie our energy stops flowing momentarily. To demonstrate this, Leyli asked me to stretch out my arm and say “I am Tom” while she applied downward force on my hand. My arm dropped an inch. She then asked me to say “I am Maggie” and pressed down again. This time though, she pushed much harder and my arm dropped three inches. The children were not fooled. One protested: “But you pushed harder the second time!”

‘I’m a dunce’

The marriage of New Age thinking with conspiracist ideation may seem an unlikely union, but the phenomenon — known as “conspirituality” — is now among the largest and most fertile subsects of the conspiracy movement. Finding common ground in a mutual distrust of mainstream ideas and politics, the convergence of the two groups was accelerated by vaccine scepticism during the pandemic with the search for alternative remedies becoming an entry point into the world of conspiracy for many New Agers.

Those I worked with at the school, as well as the parents who send their children there, came from a diverse range of backgrounds. The business studies teacher, Lyndon Farrington, runs a cryptocurrency firm that specifically caters for conspiracists who fear their money may be liable to state seizure. The philosophy teacher, Brian Lomas, who told me you could cure cancer by eating apricot kernels, is a squash coach. During lunch breaks, teachers would sit and discuss the latest theories they had come across. “What do you think about us living in a simulation?” Farrington posed one afternoon. “Have you been down that rabbit hole? … Too many coincidences. When you start looking into it, when you start thinking about it. You go and buy a blue Ford Escort and then every second car you see is a blue Ford Escort.”

The art teacher, whom I knew only as Red, had been a French teacher at a girls’ school in Stockport. She was one of the only teachers who was able to control a class and the children seemed to get something out of her lessons. But as I was beginning to wonder whether she had somehow found herself at the school by mistake, she mentioned to me offhand that she had seen “chemtrails” in the sky that morning, before proceeding to explain how condensation left in the sky by aeroplanes was in fact an aluminium vapour spread by the government to give people dementia.

Ofsted requires all teachers at registered schools to have proof of an up-to-date criminal record check, known as a DBS check. Being unregistered, there is no obligation upon Universallkidz. When asked for comment, Ratcliffe said that she had “copies of every facilitator and volunteer’s DBS checks” but declined to provide them, citing data protection. However, Leyli, who has worked at the school since it opened three years ago, told me that she did not have one.

There were other potential safety concerns too. In the warmer months, Lomas took the children for foraging lessons. He told me that on one occasion he had shown them hemlock, a highly poisonous plant, growing beside a river. He said that he had become interested in foraging when he found himself camping without food during an anti-lockdown march to London.

Teachers themselves raised concerns about the school. For two days a week the children were taught at a privately owned dilapidated Victorian house, whose owners, I was told by Ratcliffe, were “very awake”. Until recently it had been a nightclub, and was described by one eulogist as “proper manky”. Rainwater dripped from the ceiling and the bathroom was covered in graffiti. During break times, the children were given the run of the place. I once overheard Justine say to another teacher that there were “hazards everywhere”.

“You never know what you might find there,” she added.

During one lunchtime discussion between some of the teachers, Lomas gave a fascinating insight into conspiracists’ aversion to facts and reason by saying that one of his favourite figures from history was John Duns Scotus, from whose name derives the word “dunce”. Duns Scotus was a 13th-century Catholic theologian whose complex arguments about the existence of God later came to be scorned by humanist thinkers. “Knowledge was intuitive for Duns,” Lomas said. “He said that true knowledge is that which is revealed to us by God. Revelation through intuition. But at the same time you’ve got the rise of modern science and it came to be an insult, to mean stupid. So I say, I’m bringing Duns back. I’m a dunce.”

Ratcliffe repeatedly told me that mainstream schooling sapped the life out of children, turning them into weak-willed and compliant adults. Universallkidz, by contrast, is “pupil-led” and puts the enjoyment of the child at the centre of its ethos, she said. But from what I saw, the children rarely seemed to enjoy what they were doing. They were often nonplussed by the lessons and would sometimes question their purpose. When Phil asked the children what they could see and feel when they put a crystal to their “third eye”, one girl responded: “I can feel a crystal on my forehead.” His reply was telling: “Don’t be clever.”