This article is from the February 2014 issue.
My visit to Conservative MP Rob Wilson’s constituency is all about the three Rs: Reading (East), Writing and Arithmetic. A former shadow higher education minister, Wilson takes me to two highly contrasting schools to demonstrate – occasionally in the face of youthful hostility – why he’s obsessed with shaking up schooling in the area, parts of which, he reveals, “have underperformed educationally for way too long”.
Reading East, a rather urban, inner-city constituency for a Tory politician – Reading Borough Council and nearby Slough Borough Council are Labour-led – is an easy 25-minute train ride from Paddington, yet I think every local I meet today bewails the traffic in Reading; recent floods have meant closures. Though escaping Slough’s Betjeman-blighted reputation, Reading is sometimes considered unexciting, a functional town forever chasing city status.
Class war
However, accusations of dullness are quashed by our first appointment for the day with the Year 10 pupils of Reading Girls’ School. One of the less well-performing schools in the constituency, it has recently secured a multi-million-pound investment from the government for new premises in 2016. With its greying buildings frowning at us as we walk up the drive, it’s clear the investment will freshen it up.
The citizenship class teacher greets us and tells me: “The first time he came, he thought he was doing a touchy-feely talk to local students – it ended up in the local press as a heated debate about transport in Reading. The kids have quite strong views.” According to her, she “went for the jugular” when discussing the latest teachers’ strike with Wilson. This should be fun.
And it seems the teaching union’s views have somehow trickled down into her class’s consciousness as they ask questions about hard-working teachers and that nasty Mr Gove. “Why does one man think he knows more about education than thousands of teachers?” is a variation on a theme.
“Teachers sometimes don’t like changes in education,” admits an embattled Wilson, the focus of around 30 suspicious eyes, “but you could argue teachers have never liked changes in education…”
At this point, the teacher audibly snarls and narrows her eyes.
“[We are] injecting some competition into the educational environment,” Wilson ploughs on. “We need to turn out lots of bright young people. Sometimes when you’re so close to the coalface, like teachers, you lose a bit of the wider perspective. It takes someone from the outside to come up with ideas.”
“I can’t less this go,” the citizenship teacher hisses. “Ask it, Miss!” “Go, Miss!” An iPhone flashes up, video function hungrily poised.
“Everything is done on tables and percentages, but these kids work their socks off,” she cries. “That B, C, even D, they get – we’ve worked hard for them to get it. We can’t all be rocket scientists.” There’s a smattering of “true-says” and “Amens”. He replies: “I’ve been trying to transform educational opportunities in my constituency. We need different routes to success... You might be interested in bricklaying or hairdressing… Academic, technical, vocational – we haven’t had these opportunities until now.”
Wilson has recently “literally forced the government” to fund a University Technical College (UTC) in Reading (“It wasn’t in their list of priorities, let’s put it that way”). He’s also received the go-ahead for opening a new free school in September.
Later, in the car I quiz him about his passion for education policy, and why he’s laboured as a PPS under Jeremy Hunt since 2010, and George Osborne since September 2013, rather than pursuing a government role in his specialist subject. He tells me he was “one of the drivers of the Pupil Premium and spoke directly to David Cameron and Michael Gove about that, and pressed the case, so you’ll find I’ve had a lot more influence behind the scenes than you think”.
Is he happy with using unqualified teachers? “It’s been quite difficult in the past to recruit physics teachers, for example…,” he explains. “If you’ve got people at the local uni who are able and have the skills to come and teach physics at a state school – a lot of teaching is about an ability to inspire, impart information, skills that aren’t learnt; they’re sort of god-given – why shouldn’t you?”
Back in class, conversation takes a peculiar turn.
A student asks, “Are you on the Organ Donor Register?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Wilson blinks. “It’s one of those personal decisions. I’d like to stay intact when I pass away. I know there’s a feeling that everyone should give away their eyeballs and their kidneys but… [to me, it’s] odd. Instinctively, [it’s something] I don’t feel comfortable about.”
Year 10 listens in rapt yet suspicious silence. Towards the end of the lesson, the same girl asks:
“If one of your organs failed, would you take someone else’s?”
My photographer and I can’t suppress our laughter. This is like a press conference from hell.
“If I was in deep trouble… yes, I probably would,” Wilson replies – honest, yet baffled. I wonder whether he had to deal with these questions when he was aide to the health secretary.
Following the lesson, one girl tells me, “It sounded like it was not from his head, it was coming from someone else – like reading off a script.” Her teacher, however, is more enthusiastic: “It was nice of him to come in. It’s a brave thing to do.”
Private matters
Some respite is in order as we whizz to Wilson’s appointment at a private boarding and day school (£9,910 a term for full boarders). It’s only a few miles away but might as well be on the other side of the moon.
The sun emerges obligingly and glistens on the swathes of dewy grass grounds surrounding Leighton Park School, an idyllic stately home/cricket pavilion hybrid. A Lebanese cedar stands steadfast by its side, and a young man in a blazer with shoulder-length hair strolls past, violin strapped to his back.
At first the contrast between the two schools seems dramatic. The first query put to Wilson by a tiny IB class of Year 12s is, “How did you first get into politics?” It’s posed by an elbow-patched, tweedy teen, perhaps envisaging a future as an MP. In Reading Girls’, the first question was, “Why do you hate our school?”
However, as the session continues, I note similarities. Though these students are older, presumably better-off, and noticeably whiter than their Reading Girls’ peers, they have the same level of adolescent curiosity, the same attentiveness yet suspicion when their MP speaks.
A question about Edward Snowden – “hero or villain?” – momentarily stumps Wilson.
“He’s created enormous dangers for British people. I haven’t reached a conclusion… [but] I’ve always believed in transparency and accountability, so I can’t be ultra-critical...”
Again, on the subject of education, a teacher gets angry. She asks about independent schools.
“If I were the state sector, I’d be making more use of independent schools. Not all independent schools [do enough for local state schools],” Wilson replies. “I came up with an idea of government funding places for disadvantaged pupils in independent schools to put rocket boosters under social mobility, which has been lacking in this country for the past few years.”
The teacher retorts: “That suggests state schools are inferior.”
After a question about Labour’s proposal to break up RBS and Lloyds, the chancellor’s new PPS gives a revealing reply: “My colleague Douglas Carswell [Conservative MP for Clacton] had an attractive idea – why can’t we get internet companies like Google [to provide banking services] instead of these starchy, staid high street places? We need more competition.”
Wilson clearly has come across differently to these students compared to the last class. Following the lesson, one lanky young man tells me, “He answered my question and highlighted a lot of other main issues. He’s inspired our generation of politics students.”
We are kindly invited to stay for lunch; fish and chips in the raucous ‘Oakview Restaurant’ canteen, a grassy amble away from the main building, but halfway through the meal, a bell tinkles in the distance and everyone freezes in silence. This lasts for about 10 seconds. It’s eerie.
“That’s the Quaker silence,” explains the teacher afterwards. This school is run on Quaker values – there are no disciplinary sanctions for misbehaving pupils here and, unlike many other schools that charge similar fees, it refuses to be a pushy academic hothouse.
Wilson in his youth attended Wallingford School, a state school, and admits it’s a problem that a disproportionate number of his colleagues were privately educated.
“It’s important that the Conservative Party is a broad church, and we need to be much more open to people from all walks of life... There are not enough people who come from state schools in the Conservative Party. But there are not enough people in parliament, across parties, who come from state schools, it’s not just a Conservative problem.”
He continues: “A lot of the electorate don’t care which school people have been to, although many of them would have liked to have gone to those top schools or sent their children there.
“Our job should be to make sure that every child has the opportunity to do whatever they are disposed towards. We’re beginning to do that with the changes we’re making, but we’ve got a long way to go.”
Greasy spoons and missing teeth
But it’s not all education, education, education. Wilson, an informative tour guide – though frustratingly discreet as a government insider – has plenty more appointments.
Early in the day, we stop off at a greasy spoon on a little row of shops to meet the Conservative head of Woodley Town Council, Keith Baker. Queen’s I Want to Break Free is a backdrop to an equally mellifluous conversation, as Baker and Wilson agree about the third Thames Bridge they’re fighting for, and building a new leisure centre. But there’s a marked key change when the subject of cuts is brought up. Baker insists there’s not much more he can cut, having already stripped out “80-90% of inefficiency”.
“We’ll have to be sacking people, it’s got to that stage,” he implores. “We got nothing for weekly bin collection. You [the government] take more.”
Wilson sighs, but agrees to talk to Baker’s finance team, before joking, “Have you got any shale gas under Wokingham?”
Later, I ask Wilson about his campaign against the BBC which began when he tweeted about the Jimmy Savile scandal, saying the broadcaster had “questions to answer.”
He found the BBC’s reaction to his criticism “breathtaking, they just clammed up” and confides that he’d like an independent investigation.
“There’s definitely a role for an inquiry that looks at the wider [picture], not just Savile. You notice there seems to have been a wider culture in the country that turned a blind eye to child abuse, and my concern is that there’s an element of that around still, even though we’ve moved on. At the BBC there was also an element of misogyny. These things worry me, so it’s worth trying to find out what happened in all these cases. What were all the drivers that allowed people to do these things without being held accountable?
“The BBC has managed to fragment the inquiry down to a number of different investigations that weren’t independent at all. Most are puppet inquiries… so there’s an argument to be made for some independent inquiry taking place.”
He is not, however, against the licence fee, has plenty of love for certain BBC programmes, such as Radio Berkshire and Today (“it’s a real tussle in the morning which one I listen to most”), and “I loved Strictly Come Dancing”.
What about his reality-TV-MP colleagues Penny Mordaunt and Nadine Dorries? Would he ever follow their example? “What reality TV programme would I do, you mean? Crikey… I wouldn’t mind doing anything with Ant and Dec in it because they’re hilarious”.
Like I’m A Celebrity?
“Yeah, but obviously I can’t. What other programmes are there?”
I mention Splash! and he concludes: “I’m not sure my constituents would want to see me in my Speedos. Some things are better off hidden.”
We stop off at a five-a-side football facility called Goals. Wilson, a football lover who unashamedly supports Arsenal over Reading (“there’s no point being a fraud to your constituents”), is particularly interested in its health impact for the children. He agrees to help its manager secure more clients for weekend bookings.
He is invited to play in their “veterans” games on Wednesday night, but, genuinely looking disheartened, declines because of “our sitting hours – the life of an MP doesn’t match up with people’s normal working hours”.
As if to prove his point, a long surgery, with constituents arriving by appointment, begins at Woodley Library. At a desk set up on a colourful shaggy rug depicting an elephant and a mouse, Wilson is met with an eclectic array of tasks: getting the NHS to cough up for botched tooth surgery, helping a family whose neighbour’s house is a disruptive “building site”, answering a student’s questions about the treatment of Gurkhas. He says that every time he’s out for dinner in his constituency, people come up to him.
Perhaps some time in the jungle is in order…