No policies: Reform will reveal education plans ‘in due course’

Reform still has not written its education policy, a senior party official has admitted, as teachers accuse it of offering “no answers to the real problems” confronting them.

Nigel Farage’s party descended on Birmingham last week for their annual conference, which focused on its plan for its first 100 days in power should it win the next general election.

Over the two days, immigration, the tax-free allowance and tuition fees were among the topics given the most attention – while schools were shunted to the periphery.

National Education Union boss Daniel Kebede boss criticised Reform for failing to develop its policies, which “have barely changed from what was in its 2024 general election manifesto”.

“The party offers no answers to the real problems facing schools,” he said.

Schooling was not mentioned in either of Farage’s keynote speeches. And the only changes to primaries and secondaries promised by education spokesperson Suella Braverman focused on culture war themes like the singing of the national anthem.

“We need to save our schools,” she told the conference. “We need our young people to see what patriotism looks like if they are going to have any sense of how great this country is.”

Braverman announced she would require “every school” to regularly sing God Save the King and hymns.

She told Schools Week the requirements “will be in law, in guidance and it will be made clear that it’s an obligation”.

Her party will explore how to ensure compliance through Ofsted inspections and is expecting parents to report any primaries and secondaries that flout the requirement.

“We will find out if schools are breaking the law and there will be consequences,” she stressed.

Braverman would not say how often schools would be expected to sing certain songs, but she stressed it would have to be on a “regular” basis. This will be specified “in due course”.

Flying the flag

She also plans to roll out a curriculum highlighting the “good” done by the British Empire and reannounced proposals obliging all primaries and secondaries to fly the Union flag.

The former idea is similar to proposals included in Reform’s 2024 manifesto, which called for history and social science content to be reviewed to ensure that children were “taught about their heritage”.

Braverman also took aim at Labour’s SEND reforms, which she branded “one-size-fits-all”.

“It says we want special educational needs children in mainstream schools – but that isn’t necessarily right,” she said. “Some children want specialist schools, some children want to stay in mainstream, some children want to have a bit of a hybrid.”

Despite acknowledging that specialist capacity was “wholly insufficient”, she refused to commit to building more special schools “because that’s expensive”.

Braverman also pointed to SEND tribunals, which hear appeals of town hall decisions about education, health and care plans (EHCPs), statutory documents specifying the support that children with special needs require.

Ministry of Justice figures show that just over 25,000 appeals were lodged in 2024-25, a 19 per cent rise on the year before (21,106). Data suggests families are successful in whole or in part in about 99 per cent of cases.

“Right now, local authorities make very, very bad decisions,” Braverman said. “We need to look more carefully at how those decisions are exposed.

“Why don’t we actually inject much more transparency and accountability to those officials who are rejecting and refusing to acknowledge the needs of hundreds of thousands of families?”

When asked for more information, Braverman said the party would “flesh out some more details on that”.

Whitehall headcount cull

During a fringe event, Danny Kruger, the party’s head of government preparation, promised to roll out a “radical reduction” in Whitehall’s overall headcount, involving quango and non-ministerial department culls.

Despite this, he also wants to improve civil service pay in a bid to attract business leaders into public sector roles.

“The talent is out there, but at the moment it doesn’t want to join this blancmange of a system. There is a culture [in Whitehall] that distrusts business.”

To aid this, Kruger wants to create a “much more permeable barrier” between the public and private sectors that will see businesspeople moving between the two “for a specific purpose, but not for life”.

It is unclear whether the Reform sledgehammer will be directed at Ofsted. In a separate fringe event, Kruger told Spectator editor and former education secretary Michael Gove that the party would review the inspectorate’s future, before adding: “We must ask Suella what she thinks.”

When asked by Schools Week if he would abolish the body, he admitted that he did not know.

This comes after we revealed in June that Farage would appoint Whitehall enforcers to ensure that schools comply with bans on diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives.

Gove also probed Kruger on whether the party is “committed to more grammar schools”. A ban has been in place on new selective schools since 1998.

“Where local people want them, yes,” Kruger responded.

“We are absolutely committed to raising standards and ensuring that actually schools reflect the values and the interests of local communities, not of the teaching profession, which is infecting education so bad.”

Teacher Tapp surveys this year showed that 24 per cent of teachers would vote for Labour, while a further 24 per cent support the Greens.

Just 2 per cent backed Reform, while 25 per cent said they did not know who they would choose. Teaching unions have also criticised Reform.

‘We haven’t written it yet’

Gawain Towler, a party board member, described this as a “serious problem”, noting that unions think “we have horns and smell of sulphur”.

“I think they are frightened of a caricature of who we are rather than who we are,” he added. “[They] literally haven’t read our education policy – because we haven’t written it yet.”

Towler said that a “couple of people in the research department are looking at it and working on it, but we’re certainly not there yet”.

But Kebede accused Towler of being “out of touch with his own party” as its “leader has declared war on the unions”.

“Reform UK’s record in local government is a harbinger of what we could expect if they take control in Westminster,” Kebede continued.

“Instead of offering real policy alternatives, they stoke division and undermine social cohesion. Feeding on anxiety; anger instead of solutions; scapegoats instead of answers.”

Wider doubts also hang over the party’s actual ability to enact change.

Acknowledging this, Ben Bradley, Reform’s head of local government, described the councils the party currently controls as its “shop window”.

“They are the proof in the pudding. Nigel spoke to council leaders recently at an event and said, ‘You are just as responsible for Reform winning the next election as I am’.”

These councils will also help to inform how the party plans to work with officials. Kruger even claimed that Whitehall will “hate us” and that some civil servants would conspire against a Reform government.

To combat this, council leaders have weekly group meetings. These are usually attended by Bradley and Richard Tice, Farage’s deputy.

Kent council boss Linden Kemkaran said: “The lessons we’ve learned in local government will be invaluable when we get into Number 10 because, essentially, it’s just dealing with officers but on a bigger scale.”