An ‘illegal’ school is teaching children conspiracy theories including I’m a Celebrity, a Bill Gates-inspired plot to prepare the public to eat cockroaches after ‘The Great Reset’, an undercover investigation has revealed.
Ladan Ratcliffe, 60, the founder of Universallkidz, in Stockport, Greater Manchester, is reportedly convincing parents to take their children out of mainstream education and tell the council they are being home-schooled.
But in reality they send their children, aged between eight and fourteen, to a dilapidated Victorian mansion, a former nightclub, to learn from a ‘shaman’ named Fill that crystals can heal any illness or injury.
Tom Ball, an undercover reporter for The times worked as a teacher at the school for almost a month and said his colleagues believed viruses were fake, airplane ‘chemtrails’ caused dementia and dinosaurs did not exist.
One teacher, Justine, taught the children that in the future they would eat cockroaches as ‘Klaus’ [Schwab, head of the WEF] And [Bill] Gates have their way’ and that I’m a celebrity… Get Me Out of Here was aired to ‘get us all involved’ when ‘it’s time for y’all to eat cockroach’.
Shaman Phil teaches children that crystals can be used to heal any illness or injury at Universallkidz, in Stockport, Greater Manchester
Ladan Ratcliffe, 60, the founder of Universallkidz
The history teacher taught students about the diaries of Holocaust victim Anne Frank, but questioned their veracity, a common anti-Semitic conspiracy, when he spoke to another teacher.
The classes were held at the country house, at a community center in Stockport and online, The Times reported.
Conspiracy theory pamphlets littered the corridors of the mansion, claiming that Covid vaccines, climate science and 5G mobile internet were methods the government was using to control the public.
The Times claimed that Universallkidz “goes to great lengths to conceal its activities.” The school’s website says it offers ‘holistic alternative education’ to provide an ‘innovative approach to supporting homeschooling parents’.
Ladan Ratcliffe, a former teacher, founded the school more than three years ago.
Following The Times’ undercover investigation, Ofsted has launched an urgent investigation into Universallkidz, the newspaper reports.
Illegal schools, which offer full-time education but are not registered with the government, take advantage of the lack of legal regulations regarding homeschooling.
Universalkidz students are officially homeschooled. Ratcliffe told the undercover Times reporter that she helps parents get their children out of the state system and tells them to lie to the council about sending them to the school, which costs £30 a day.
Ratcliffe pictured in the schoolyard in undercover footage from The Times
Growing concerns about illegal schools led Ofsted to set up a taskforce in 2016 to tackle them. Inspectors at the time thought only 24 schools existed, but it is now believed there are hundreds.
Most of the illegal schools prosecuted by Ofsted are run by extremist Jewish and Christian groups, but in the wake of the pandemic, more non-religious illegal schools have been set up by conspiracy theorists.
When the reporter worked at the school in January this year, there were 13 students, but he was told there were sometimes 28.
The school is open four days a week from 10am to 3.30pm, but not every student attends every day. Most attend school three days a week, The Times reported.
Two children who attended four days a week had special educational needs.
Ofsted Chief Inspector Sir Martyn Oliver said the findings of The Times investigation were ‘very alarming, but unfortunately not surprising’.
He told the newspaper: ‘Over the past eight years we have found hundreds of unregistered schools, operating in unsafe buildings, run by unsuitable people and teaching children very little. We are urgently investigating this shocking case, but weaknesses in the current justice system continue to hamper our efforts to tackle unregistered schools.
‘The Schools Act 2022 would have given us extra powers to investigate and close illegal schools, but that legislation was scrapped. Without those powers, I remain concerned that thousands of children across England will continue to attend illegal schools.”
Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson told The Times it was ‘utterly shocking that this school has operated with impunity for so long and has poisoned the minds of these young people’.
And a spokeswoman for the Department for Education said it was ‘committed to improving the powers to investigate and take action against these schools’.
Ratcliffe denied to The Times that Universallkidz was a school, saying it is “only open about 11 hours a week”, saying it was “a community initiative between parents and children”.
She denied to the newspaper that the school taught conspiracy theories, saying that “the learning experiences we provide are based on the natural laws of the universe and ancient knowledge that has been left out of mainstream education.”
MailOnline has contacted Universallkidz for further comment.
