Reform UK’s education spokesperson, Suella Braverman, used her speech at the party’s conference in Birmingham to promise that the party would introduce a ‘patriotic’ curriculum into schools. Ms Braverman, who, prior to defecting to Reform UK, was Home Secretary in the last Conservative government, also said that under a Reform UK government all schools would be required to ‘sing the national anthem, our great hymns and.…. fly the union flag.’ Asked afterwards if schools would be required to sing the national anthem every day, she clarified: ‘I’m not suggesting necessarily every day, but on a regular basis whereby children are imbibed with the national anthem and it’s something they can recite by heart and enjoy singing it.’
Speaking to delegates, Ms Braverman alleged that there was a ‘profound problem’ that schools ‘are more likely to teach kids that they can be born in the wrong body or about refugee week than how great Britain truly is’, suggesting that elsewhere in the world ‘school children learn to love their country. They understand it has faults and flaws, but they are taught to love what is theirs.’ She said Reform UK would therefore introduce a ‘balanced patriotic curriculum’, continuing: ‘So, what does that really mean? The British Empire did so much good for the world, including my ancestors, it is the empire of Shakespeare and Dickens, it abolished slavery, it defeated Hitler, it spread democracy, built railways and raised billions out of poverty. It is time we taught that in our schools.’ Elsewhere in the speech, Ms Braverman argued that education was currently ‘a postcode lottery where education is built not on talent but on wealth and where you live’, with the children of wealthy parents having a higher chance of attending an outstanding school.
The day before her speech Ms Braverman was part of a panel for a session ‘Breaking the cycle: improving outcomes for is advantaged young white men’, where she argued that public bodies ‘actively discriminate against white working-class boys’. She added: ‘In some schools – not all – around the country we’ve seen a demonisation of boys. We’ve seen an attempt to push boys down, not to acknowledge their skills, support their strengths’. Also on the panel was Malcolm Press, president of Universities UK, who argued the biggest impact for outcomes for white working-class boys was during their primary education. ‘If you reach the age of 11 and you don’t have reading skills, you are much more likely to go down the antisocial path’, he said.
We will have education news from the other party conferences over the coming weeks.