EXCLUSIVE: Nigel Farage government 'would be disaster' for children, education chief warns

Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, told The Mirror a 'failure to invest and deliver' was leading to a surge in support for Reform UK

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A Nigel Farage government would be “disastrous” for children and young people, the chief of the UK’s largest education has said.

Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), told The Mirror a "failure to invest and deliver" was leading to a surge in support for Reform UK.

He also warned of a rise of racism inside classrooms and the scourge of kids’ addiction to social media.

Mr Kebede said: “I think the stakes are really high for Labour actually, because their failure to invest and deliver on the change that they promised is leading to a Nigel Farage government in four years time, which will be absolutely disastrous for children and disastrous for education.”

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Asked about the impact of Mr Farage party's rise on kids, Mr Kebede said: “We're seeing racist incidents increase in schools every year at the moment. Schools have become targeted by some of these far right groups.

“If they're schools of sanctuary, schools that have welcomed refugees, we know that they've been getting bombarded with emails from concerned local residents that a school might be humanitarian in its approach to welcoming children from war zones.

“So of course, it is manifesting in schools at the moment, which is making it very difficult for teachers to deal with.

“We've also got the problem that actually in our curriculum and in our schools, there isn't much space for young people to talk about what's going on in the world around them and they want to, so there's not much space for teachers to challenge the ideas that are manifesting in our classrooms."

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Mr Kebede also called on the Government to tackle spiralling levels of child poverty and tax tech firms to raise money for kids’ mental health support.

The former school teacher said it would be “absolutely grotesque” to keep the two-child benefit limit in place and reiterated calls on Chancellor Rachel Reeves - who is said to be thinking about removing it - to ditch the Tory-era policy.

The Mirror revealed in August that the number of children being sent home from school due to racist behaviour has soared to record levels. Suspensions for racism went from 7,403 in the school year ending in 2021, to 15,191 in the academic year which concluded last summer.

Mr Kebede said social media was also having an impact and said the NEU has launched a campaign named ‘Big Tech, Little Victims’.

It is calling for the age of digital consent to rise from 13 to 16 and for a windfall tax to be placed on big tech companies to raise money for child mental health services. He also said there must be space for digital literacy to be taught on the school curriculum.

“The real problem is that social media is highly addictive,” he said. “Over 40% of under 13s at the moment are on social media. 30% of their use is driven by algorithms that are largely drawing them to explicit, extreme content.

“If you go around any secondary school at the minute, every 14-year-old will have watched repeatedly on social media, on X, the Charlie Kirk (a US commentator) assassination.

“What we are exposing young people to through smartphones, through social media, is going to have long-lasting damage on society and so the Government means to take a much firmer line on it.”

A Reform UK spokesman said: "The fact that we have to argue over whether children should be taught objectively, fairly and factually or be indoctrinated by divisive and poisonous left-wing ideology is absolutely bonkers.

"If the NEU’s general secretary, who is also a self-declared Marxist, gets to preach about how children and teenagers should be taught in our schools, then parents across the country should be very worried."

A Department for Education spokeswoman said: “Education can be the antidote to hate, and the classroom should be a safe environment where critical thinking is encouraged.

“We are providing a range of resources through our new RSHE guidance and Educate Against Hate to navigate these challenging issues. The expert-led curriculum review is also looking at the skills children need to thrive in a fast-changing online world.”