“We are literally fighting for our country, aren’t we?” the architect of Reform UK’s apprenticeships policies, Kevin Byrne, told an audience of businesspeople on the first morning of the party’s conference.
“I don’t think there are two that are fighting as strongly as these two are,” he added, gesturing towards Suella Braverman, the party’s provocative education spokesperson, and Lee Anderson, its gruff, straight-talking chairman.
‘Fighting’ seemed an appropriate word, given how divisive British politics has become.
Later, the party’s inner circle was fighting allegations of potentially unlawful foreign funding and Nigel Farage had to fight to be heard on stage over shouting from angry protesters.
Meanwhile, another fight simmers against the ‘leftwing teaching unions’ who Braverman accuses of “driving down standards and failing teachers, parents and children”.
But beneath the battle cries, something more substantial has changed.
Last year’s Reform conference was dominated by its common cause of stopping illegal immigration, with its skills policies largely lost at sea. Twelve months on, the party has begun putting serious flesh on the bones of its plans for government, including a blueprint for its first 100 days in office.
And skills is now firmly part of it.
Lee Anderson, Suella Braverman and Kevin Byrne at a skills fringe session at Reform UK’s conference
‘Our vocational and technical revolution’
When it comes to skills, the vocational education sector is allied to many of Reform’s objectives, if not all its proposed methods.
Braverman talks of almost doubling apprenticeship starts and “seriously raising the cultural, and educational, and social esteem of vocational and technical and trade routes” – something sector lobbyists have tried to persuade successive governments to do since time immemorial.
The incentives proposed to realise Reform’s “skills revolution” include a 30 per cent tax credit on wages for SMEs hiring 16 to 18-year-old apprentices and a £2,000 retention bonus when an apprentice stays with their employer for two years after completing their apprenticeship.
Both were broadly welcomed by business and training provider representatives attending the conference.
To pay for these carrots, Braverman proposes slashing funding from the “bottom set of universities that offer dreadful value for money”, targeting “woke degrees”, “universities that don’t value free speech” and “degrees that don’t benefit the UK economy”.
Recent governments have tinkered with making education more responsive to skills shortages, through local skills improvement plans and Skills England, with limited success.
Reform would go much further, tilting the education system so that filling skills gaps becomes its central purpose. But some of the detail has raised eyebrows.
A protestor being escorted away from the auditorium, while Nigel Farage mocked them for being a university student
Making providers optional
Reform’s proposal to make third-party apprenticeship training providers “optional” for SMEs has prompted scepticism about whether small companies would have the time and resources to train apprentices themselves.
Employers have long complained about having to release apprentices for off-the-job training. But only 0.3 per cent of large employers currently eligible to become employer-providers choose to do so.
Business representatives doubted SMEs would have the time or inclination, with one describing the policy as “naïve” and another as “based on nostalgia rather than data”.
Byrne, who made his fortune founding and later selling the online tradespeople directory Checkatrade, has also voiced support for Tommy Robinson and conspiracy theories, including that governments are using aircraft to spray chemicals, known as ‘chemtrails’, over the population.
He said his apprenticeship ideas were shaped by asking tradespeople in Facebook groups what stopped them taking on apprentices, and the answer was “the hurdles are too high, it’s just too much paperwork”.
How I helped shape Reform’s plan to get England taking on apprentices
Reform’s distance from the education establishment may explain some gaps in its understanding of the apprenticeship system.
It did not seek advice from either the Association of Colleges or Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) when drawing up the policies, although a meeting with an AELP representative has been scheduled.
Braverman claimed there was “£1 billion to £2 billion of unspent levy funds sitting in the government coffers because the red tape and rigidity with the criteria to take on an apprentice has ballooned in the last decade”.
That conflates levy receipts with the apprenticeship budget set by the Treasury.
The levy raised £4.1 billion across the UK in 2024-25. England received a £2.7 billion apprenticeship budget and roughly £500 million was allocated to the devolved nations, leaving an estimated £830 million with the Treasury. But England’s budget was fully spent, so there was no £1 billion to £2 billion pot of unspent apprenticeship funding waiting to be used.
She also said “many businesses are forced to sign up their apprentice to local FE colleges”, some of which were “not so great”. But colleges account for only around 16 per cent of the apprenticeship market and independent training providers are the dominant players.
Braverman acknowledged quality control was “absolutely essential” and said she did not want “a Wild West” in which apprenticeships were awarded without standards being met.
“We need to get to a happy balance whereby we can assure consumers, businesses, young people of the quality, but also make it much more user-friendly,” she added.
Braverman spoke of emulating elements of the apprenticeship systems in Switzerland and Germany. But neither dispenses with an external education provider. Their celebrated ‘dual’ systems are called dual precisely because apprentices learn in two settings: the workplace and a vocational school.
Reform would also integrate a probationary period into apprenticeships, allowing employers to “call it off if that person is not right for the role”. Employers can already put apprentices on probation, as they can other new employees.
Suella Braverman, Reform’s education and skills spokesperson
All being equal
There were plenty of contradictions in Reform leaders’ rhetoric.
Braverman, who served as home secretary during her 11 years as a Conservative MP, decried how Britain had been “destroyed by a Conservative Party that broke this country over 14 years”.
She wants schools and colleges to teach young people greater pride in Britain’s history and “how great this country is”, while telling them the country is “at breaking point because of mass uncontrolled immigration” after 30 years of decline.
Then there is the question of how Reform would police the education system.
Braverman said the party would explore using Ofsted to ensure ‘God Save the King’ is regularly sung in educational institutions up to the age of 18. But Danny Kruger, the party’s head of preparing for government, indicated he would consider scrapping Ofsted and Skills England as part of an “absolute bonfire of the quangos”.
The party also passed a conference motion to tear up the public sector equality duty, which requires public bodies to consider the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination and harassment when making decisions, and replace it with a “public duty of impartiality”.
Such a change would affect the statutory framework within which colleges, the DfE and councils make decisions about areas including SEND, admissions, staffing and curriculum, and could have unintended consequences.
Asked by FE Week whether politicians could enforce Reform’s proposed DEI ban, Kruger said the intention was not for government to interfere with “precisely and exactly” what was said in classrooms.
Instead, he spoke of transforming teacher recruitment.
“We need to have people going into the teaching profession who have common sense values, who share the normal instincts of the public,” he said.
Schools should be “properly accountable to parents and to communities”, rather than being “run by teacher unions and the quangos and the DfE”.
But Reform board member Gawain Towler identified a practical problem: Reform supporters are “not the sort of people who want to become teachers”.
Teaching unions “think we have horns and smell of sulphur”, he said, but teachers should not worry because Reform had “no intention of making life miserable” for them.
The rhetoric from Braverman and Farage was less conciliatory. Farage has accused “left-wing teaching unions” of “poisoning the minds” of young people and pledged to “go to war” with them in government.
The hostility is mutual. The National Education Union has labelled Reform “far-right and racist” and pledged to campaign against its candidates, while the University and College Union has passed motions committing it to campaigns opposing Reform.
Nigel Farage on stage
A different kind of special measure
Braverman also promised to “bring an end to the special education needs emergency”.
A detailed plan has yet to emerge, but Reform appears to be considering restricting support for less acute needs while expanding specialist provision for those with more complex SEND needs.
Anderson said he wanted “smaller special schools”, because those who “need special attention should be getting that in a specialised school”.
But he also claimed SEND was being overdiagnosed. Referring to his Ashfield constituency, he said 30 per cent of pupils were reported to have SEND and “I don’t believe it for one minute”.
“There’s going to be a few that’s genuine, but there’s far too many being labelled.”
Reform also wants people capable of work who have been unemployed for 12 months or more to undertake public sector and charity placements assigned by councils while searching for permanent employment.
Meanwhile, its London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham said she feared becoming NEET was gaining “social cachet” among teenagers and suggested a campaign of TikTok videos and posters telling them: “Don’t become NEETs, get a job.”
Discussing employers’ lack of incentives to recruit young people, Cunningham, who has six children, described teenagers as “intrinsically materialistic, lazy, difficult and rude”. They therefore need “something to motivate them”.
Reform conference: Robert Jenrick with Joe Sallam, director of policy at the Centre for Social Justice
The devolution dilemma
Devolution could deliver Reform significant political power, with the party potentially controlling devolved authorities across a substantial part of England by 2028.
Robert Jenrick, the party’s shadow chancellor, wants employment support for disabled people devolved from the Department for Work and Pensions to “local councils or mayors”. But the party remains sceptical of the ideology underpinning devolution.
Towler believes “the great experiment is not going to work as well as Mr Burnham would like”, warning it will lead to “duplicating teams at all sorts of levels instead of cutting costs”.
He also admitted Reform was “not providing enough support” to its mayoral teams.
Towler had tried to work with them to produce a statement setting out their achievements after a year in power because the party’s central operation had not done so.
“They’re happy to put them on a platform, but the follow-up is bad,” he said.
And when FE Week asked Jenrick whether Greater Lincolnshire mayor Andrea Jenkyns’ policy of scrapping ESOL provision could become national Reform policy, he said he was “not familiar” with the issue.
“But under our immigration system, you won’t be able to come into the country unless you speak fluent English,” he added.
Reform UK’s leaders finish their conference with a rendition of ‘God Save the King’
Never gonna give you up
It would be a mistake for the FE sector to underestimate Reform, or Farage’s ability to weather the storms surrounding him.
As the party’s donations scandal hit the headlines, Farage’s fans, sparkling in union jack sequins and turquoise attire, remained unwaveringly supportive.
Behind many of the party’s education policies is the diagnosis that too many young people have disengaged because the current system feels irrelevant to them. Its detractors might wonder whether infusing the curriculum with patriotism would make it feel more relevant.
Reform’s proposed apprenticeship incentives and greater emphasis on technical education could find plenty of support within FE.
But its proposed solution extends much further: reshaping what young people are taught, who teaches them, how institutions promote equality and how patriotism is expressed.
While security concerns delayed their leader’s appearance on stage, party members merrily – and very aptly – danced and swayed to Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’.
The conference ended with Reform politicians singing ‘God Save the King’ in front of a giant Union Jack image.
Under a Reform government, 16 to 18-year-old students could find themselves regularly expected to do the same.