A suspected “illegal school” housed in a former Manchester nightclub is teaching children conspiracy theories that dinosaurs never existed and that viruses aren’t real, an undercover investigation has revealed.
Universallkidz, the school set up by former teacher Ladan Ratcliffe, educates 13 pupils over a four-day timetable, running from 10.00am to 3.30pm.
The students are not taught the national curriculum and are instead taught a bespoke course riddled with endless conspiracy theories, all in order to defy the “plot against humanity”.
An undercover reporter from The Times spent a month working as a teacher in the Greater Manchester school, which operates out of a nightclub two days a week, a Stockport council-owned community centre room for the third, and delivers lessons online for the final day.
An 'illegal school' based in an abandoned nightclub (not pictured) is teaching its students conspiracy theories
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“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,” reporter Tom Ball disclosed.
“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 World Economic Forum] 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’.”
The school is run by Ratcliffe, who previously worked as a teacher in the Greater Manchester area for 20 years before moving to China to lead an international school with her husband.
She then moved back to Britain in 2019 and set up Universalkidz in October 2020, after an idea for the school came to her during an anti-lockdown rally.
Students attending the school are technically home-schooled, with Ratcliffe telling Ball that she encourages parents to lie to local authorities by claiming that they have placed their child into home education, when they are in fact being sent to Universallkidz.
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One teacher chastised a student after she criticised a lesson involving crystals
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Illegal schools are not registered with the Department of Education, and with many parents stating that their children are falsely being home-schooled, students become even harder to track as there is no register for home-schooled children in England.
Ratcliffe said that mainstreaming schooling drained the life out of children, so hoped that the “pupil-led” Universallkidz would inspire its pupils to enjoy education.
Lessons included sacred drumming, learning about moon cycles and homoeopathy classes. Ball was asked to teach the pupils about the basic principles of traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy.
However, Ball said in his experience observing the students and the lessons, this was often far from the case.
In one lesson, the pupils were taught that when they lie, their energy stops flowing momentarily. To demonstrate this, another teacher Leyli pushed down on Ball’s arm after he lied about his name, causing his arm to drop temporarily. However, Ball observed that the students were not fooled, with one shouting: “But you pushed harder the second time!”
In another instance, during a lesson about crystals, a teacher named Phil asked students what they could feel when they placed a crystal to their “third eye”. A young girl matter-of-factly responded that she could feel a crystal on her head, to which Paul chastised her for being clever.
Illegal schools are not registered with the Department of Education
PAUniversalkidz is also riddled with safety concerns, from leaky roofs to lessons to observe highly poisonous plants, a teacher even described the institute as having “hazards everywhere”.
Asked to respond to the 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”, batting away claims of it training conspiracy theorists.
Sir Martyn Oliver, Ofsted’s chief inspector, described the discoveries 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.”