Interview: Nicky Morgan

For a woman whose weekend lie-in was ruined by pre-dawn tablet computer action, Nicky Morgan looks remarkably bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

“Alex woke us up at half past five,” she says, highlighting an exchange of views with her seven-year-old son to which many modern parents will relate. “And as a result he lost gadget time for the rest of the day. He was deeply unimpressed by that. We had a little negotiation about whether ‘gadget time’ meant ‘TV and screen time’ as well.”

Firm discipline, parent power, pragmatism and a willingness to consult key stakeholders: the early-hours Morgan household sounds like a microcosm of the education secretary’s political philosophy.

Unashamed of admitting she’s learning on the job, both as a minister and a parent, the 42-year-old Loughborough MP was installed by David Cameron last summer precisely for the fresh approach she’s brought to the post. Not so much the anti-Gove as the not-Gove, her mission has been to provide a more telegenic, voter-friendly face of the Conservatives, while not undermining her predecessor’s reforms. Somewhat like Jeremy Hunt after Andrew Lansley’s departure, Morgan has the twin task of calming troubled waters while consolidating and explaining changes already made.

And with the election campaign effectively already under way, it’s no surprise that the Prime Minister this month selected education as one of his six key themes – and Morgan as one of his key ministers – to sell the party’s message. As an MP in a highly marginal seat, Morgan also brings a heightened awareness of the need to appeal to Labour voters and others pitched firmly in the centre ground.

“I was interested in education before, but it has been a steep learning curve, there’s lots of education lingo and acronyms to learn. I’m thinking ‘who are we doing this for?’.”

“In terms of education, I draw a lot on my experience in Loughborough. I am interested in what works,” she explains in her seventh-floor office on Great Smith Street. “There’s always lots of ideologies; you can talk about structures and this, that and the other. But actually I’m interested in ‘what does that mean for the family in Loughborough, or the family in the north, or the family in the south-west?’. Can they get their child into a school that they want to? Do they have confidence in the teaching? And is that school preparing their young person for life in modern Britain? That’s what’s driving me.

“I was interested in education before, but it has been a steep learning curve, there’s lots of education lingo and acronyms to learn. I’m thinking ‘who are we doing this for?’.”

Morgan stresses that she firmly believes in rigour, high standards, and putting power back in the hands of parents and teachers. “My own personal style, the reason I came into politics and joined the party when I was pretty young, was very much about representing people against big government,” she says.

Yet she is clear that now is the time to sell the reforms rather than disrupt the system further. “As an MP with a marginal seat I’m able to bring that to the table and can say how these things are going to play. How do we communicate our messages to people? How do we bring across people who may not be traditional or long-term Conservative supporters but actually we have a message for them? And how we communicate that.

“I think the past six months and the next three is about me explaining to parents outside Whitehall and the Westminster bubble: this is what the reforms mean. A lot of time we talk about academies and free schools, but we should be talking about putting power in the hands of heads and teachers, who we trust, and the reasons why.”

Whereas Gove often appeared to be waging a one-man war with an education establishment that he famously dubbed ‘The Blob’, his successor is keen on bringing people together on common ground.

“I am a One Nation Conservative. I do that in terms of giving our most disadvantaged pupils the best start in life – that’s where education plays its part – but also stretching our most able children. If we believe in a meritocracy, which we do as a Conservative party, you have to give people the tool – which is a great education – in order that they can make their way in life.”

“Coming from a business background, one of the things that is most surprising is just how long it takes to make changes in Whitehall."

There is that Gove-like impatience with the system, however. “We haven’t got a day to lose. If there’s a school that is struggling, that’s where reforms of this government have been: let’s not waste any time about this,” she says.

“Coming from a business background, one of the things that is most surprising is just how long it takes to make changes in Whitehall. Just occasionally you are able to say ‘change that statutory bit of guidance’ but a lot of time there’s lots of debate, and one of the things about education is everybody has a view on it...because we’ve all been through the education system.”

One man who very much has a view is former DfE permanent secretary and Ofsted chief Sir David Bell. Last week, he attacked the damage done to education by five-year election cycles and the dangers of “ministerial whims”. Bell even reserved some praise for Morgan, saying she was “less tone deaf to people who can offer intelligent, constructive proposals and critique”. Though his remarks seemed aimed at her predecessors, has she been guilty too of ‘ministerial whim’?

“The things I’ve done have been on the basis of what people from outside have told me...things like the character building, but also the new careers enterprise companies,” she says.

“David Bell’s speech, I had to chuckle. If you’ve been involved in education, it’s very hard to leave it behind. And I think it’s great to have a debate. The five-year electoral cycle, for anybody outside politics, it is frustrating, whether you’re talking about business people or schools. People have to plan on a longer-term basis.”

She says that at a recent event with the Teaching Schools Council, “they were asking what’s going to happen in May. I just said ‘you just be the best you can be’ and people respect that”.

But while her tone is respectful, Morgan says she disagreed with Sir David on his suggestions of political interference and argues that his call for an independent body to set curricula “doesn’t solve the problem he says he identified”. “I do think that at the end of the day as a member of Parliament I go out on Saturdays, I stand in Loughborough Market and I talk to people and I think it is right for us to be making decisions: direct accountability. But you also draw on expertise in terms of informing your policy.”

Bell also attacked the lack of an evidence base for the home secretary’s “bizarre” idea of deporting foreign students once they’ve graduated. Both No 10 and George Osborne – Morgan’s former boss and a clear admirer of hers – were swift to make clear that the plan would not go ahead. Does Morgan agree there’s no need to change the present arrangements? “I do. I also represent a constituency with a successful university in Loughborough and I know just how important the graduate market is for this country. There’s no doubt immigration is of course a concern. But when my constituents are talking about immigration, I don’t think they are talking about Loughborough University.”

“David Bell’s speech, I had to chuckle. If you’ve been involved in education, it’s very hard to leave it behind. And I think it’s great to have a debate."

One area where the DfE is working in tandem with the Home Office is on the Coalition’s wider attempt to combat radicalisation, both in universities and schools. Morgan, who had to make a Commons statement on the Birmingham ‘Trojan horse’ affair, says that “in the light of recent events” in France, the prevention programme is even more important. “One of the other things we are asking of schools is the whole teaching of British values. This applies to all schools, it’s about these core values. We’ve seen what can happen last week when people don’t appear to respect some of those values, things like tolerance and mutual respect,” she says. “It’s very, very important. I know this is being discussed in governing boards up and down the country. Many schools do this without necessarily badging it as such. And others are having to think ‘how do we bring this in?’

“Things like PHSE, citizenship, are all very important in terms of that. But we must have core common values that build us as a country. These British values have been defined in various strategies by the Home Office, and we are asking schools to think about how they promote them. Ofsted will be looking at them when they visit schools.

“It’s about that shared history or heritage, which I think makes us really strong as a country. We have freedom of speech and liberty in this country, we may not have had a revolution in the same way they perhaps had in France but I do think there are things that are precious, and if we don’t guard them and if we don’t appreciate them…Sometimes we think it’s not very British to talk about them, but I think it’s now clear that we do need to talk about them.”

The value of teaching children about sex and relationships has become a hot topic in recent months, with Labour pushing for compulsory lessons. The Ched Evans rape case has highlighted the debate about role models for boys and the importance of teaching them ‘no means no’ at a young age. “It’s appalling,” she says of the case. “I’d like to see a lot more emphasis on it – and I think there is – in relationship education; that’s where things like consent come in as well as unhealthy relationships, knowing when there’s a bit of an issue. I think it’s a really important part of what schools do in terms of preparing young people for life in modern Britain.”

Morgan saw sex education in action on a recent visit to a school in Kris Hopkins’ Keighley constituency, part of the tours she makes of the nation’s schools at least once every Thursday. And it’s seeing schools share their know-how that’s struck her most. “One of the exciting things people miss about our education system, and I certainly didn’t know until I got in [post], is actually the profession really care, and they want to share best practice among themselves,” she says. “The whole peer-to-peer, school-to-school support is so important, really effective and really more credible than the man from Whitehall.”

Pupil premium is the Coalition’s landmark attempt to trust teachers with extra cash, and ex-union leader John Dunford is now the ‘champion’ for the project, spreading best practice around the country. Morgan says many heads are targeting the money on extra English and maths tuition. “I feel really strongly, as a mum of a seven-year-old. I’ve just watched him learn to read over the past 18 months, it’s a completely magical thing. But if you don’t get that, if you are a child in a school where for whatever reason you don’t get that English and that maths, the absolute basics, how can we possibly as a country say we have done the right thing and we have served that child well?”

"I think extra-curricular things are important. But I do think that, speaking as a mum, when my son says ‘I’m bored’, I say ‘well, just go away and find something to do, you’ve got lots of toys, lots of things there’. "

And with private tutors used increasingly by parents, the Education Secretary believes poorer children can keep up thanks to premium-funded extra tuition. “That’s for pupil premium, that’s [a good use of the money] in terms of investing in that child or a particular group of children.”

Homework also appears to have increased in volume in recent years, a fact that led Times columnist Caitlin Moran to recently call for it to be banned. Moran wrote: “Let’s call homework what it really is. It’s a parent test. It’s a life-vampire. It’s emptied our playgrounds and panicked our children. It puts work into a home. I wish it death. I hope the biggest dog in the world comes and eats it.”

Did the secretary of state read that, and if so did she laugh? “I did laugh, but I also slightly wanted to strangle her. Because actually I think homework has got to be age-appropriate. I’m sitting here and my husband is the one who does the homework with our son and he has a lot more patience than I do. But I do think homework is good discipline, it’s about learning that. It’s a discipline in doing a little bit of work at home, investing in your own education, but it’s also about parental engagement.”

She points to a project in a primary school in her constituency which has a new scheme to get parents to practice key words and times tables with their child. “I do think as a parent sometimes you want to know what’s going on in the classroom but don’t necessarily know how to ask. I still get nervous talking to teachers and it reminds you of being at school yourself. And seeing what your child is doing is really, really important.”

But isn’t it the case that many parents actually end up doing their child’s art or geography projects instead of their offspring, as polished posters or models attest? Isn’t that a waste of time? “Absolutely. I think it’s about parental supervision and support and engagement. You know it’s not them. I would trust teachers to make sure they were asking for projects that work, that children are going to be doing. They will make it clear to parents that you’re not helping necessarily if you’re doing an awful lot of it.”

Another 21st-century foible of some parents is the heavy diarising of their children’s extra-curricular lives, with cello on a Monday, Mandarin on a Tuesday, jujitsu on a Wednesday, and so on. “We can always find the parent who does that and then there will be parents at the other end of the spectrum too,” Morgan says. “I think extra-curricular things are important. But I do think that, speaking as a mum, when my son says ‘I’m bored’, I say ‘well, just go away and find something to do, you’ve got lots of toys, lots of things there’. And then suddenly I will find that my son is busy, has dragged something out, he’s amusing himself, and I think there is an element of not needing every moment in the day to be filled. I think it’s an important skill to be learned.

“If we say to him ‘just go and do something’, it’s amazing how much the Lego will come out, or Playmobil, whatever it might be, and actually it’s lovely then to see him, he’s busy building things, Hot Wheels tracks.”

Boys tend to be heavy iPad and Xbox users, and having been on the sharp end of that early-morning tablet disruption recently, Morgan takes a close interest. “Because of the growth of tablets and everything else and the fact that children are using them younger – which is in many ways a good thing, they are great learning tools – I think it’s all kinds of new challenges. I guess our parents had ‘TV time’, we had the same kind of issue, but I do think it’s one of those things to grapple with.”

Another cause of irritation for some parents is the vogue for parents’ evenings during the daytime. Morgan is characteristically reasonable, while making her point on behalf of working mothers and fathers. “I think there should be a happy mix. Teachers themselves are often working parents and so I think they’d have to realise that evening meetings are more convenient for working parents. I think many teachers run an open classroom door. Morning meetings may be better for some parents, it’s easier to arrive an hour later in the office than it is to take half a day off to get there. My son had an open morning, that was terrific.”

“Doing this job with a child in the system, I think it’s good I’m able to say to people ‘look, I have a very personal stake in the system’ but on the other hand you are always sort of thinking it is separate."

Working parents have also had to juggle childcare to deal with teaching union strikes. Now that Patrick McLoughlin has announced that a Tory government would ban action which lacked a lower threshold of support, would that mean fewer strikes for schools? “I do think it’s important. It’s not about people not being able to strike and there will be times when people take that decision. But it is about parents having confidence. When there is a strike and schools shut that is very difficult for parents. I’ve had a number of constituents who were affected back in 2011 telling me: ‘How am I supposed to cope?’ It’s a day off work, or it means childcare. Sometimes some schools have done it so some classes are affected and not others. So that means one might be going to school, another one isn’t. That’s also very tricky. Every time a parent has to take a day off work that’s not planned that has an impact on wherever they are working on staffing patterns and the bottom line.”

So the tighter strike laws will be a vote-winner? “I think it’s one of those things that contributes to the sense that we are on the side of people who are working hard and want to do the right thing for themselves and their families. Good strong schools are a part of that. A good strong economy. Things like the strike action, saying we want schools to be open unless a certain threshold is met, is important.”

Yet with huge numbers of students in her constituency, is that other key coalition policy – tripled tuition fees – turning out to be a vote loser, or is she confident she can sell it? “I am confident. It depends very much on the candidate, how much you’ve engaged with the students. Loughborough University is very much at the heart of the constituency. I spend a lot of time on campus meeting both staff and students. I always meet the student union at the start of every academic year, and I get quite a lot of casework of constituency correspondence from students. And I think it’s very important to represent them.”

So are students coming round to the idea that the current system is better than what went before? “I think so. I think Loughborough have always been quite focused on ‘where do our students end up?’ Loughborough students are hugely employable, partly because of the sport but also because they’ve got great engineering facilities and other courses. Talking to universities, to my vice chancellor and others, students do now ask that question: ‘OK, I’m going to invest this money in this university, where is that going to get me?’

“Whether people are completely reconciled to the system, I think for families it’s still quite a big thing, and there’s always a job of work to do to explain what it means for families and their finances. Who knows, I never want to pre-empt how anybody is going to vote, but I am confident. It’s over-simplistic to say that the student vote will swing it and be a deciding factor in a number of constituencies.”

A key educational decision for one particular Loughborough family – her own – is just where to send her son to school once he’s left primary level. Would she like to send him to a state secondary?

 “I would very much like to send him, we have got some great secondary schools in Loughborough, state secondaries, academies. And actually I think they are a terrific option. We are a way off having to make any decisions.”

 “One day it would be lovely to have another female leader of the party and I do think that it was great in Scotland at one point they had female leaders of the parties."

But is it, as some argue, now almost a duty on a secretary of state – and a prime minister – to send their children to state schools? “I don’t know about political duty as such, but I think it sends a clear signal that actually there are great schools. And both Michael Gove obviously and the prime minister, whose children are at primary school at the moment, have identified schools that they think are right for themselves and their families.

“I think it is a vote of confidence. But I think it’s one of those really difficult things for politicians’ families, which is at what point is the family public property compared to a member of Parliament or the minister? And it’s something that we grapple with quite a lot as a family.

“Doing this job with a child in the system, I think it’s good I’m able to say to people ‘look, I have a very personal stake in the system’ but on the other hand you are always sort of thinking it is separate. The prime minister will say that actually he has made the right decision, talking about it, for Nancy, going round talking to schools, he’s been very clear about making the right decision for her.”

Which brings us to the right decision for Nicky Morgan. If she is returned in Loughborough at the election, some have said she’s a dark horse in any future race for the leadership. So, would she one day like to lead the Tory party?

“It’s not something I dwell on at all,” she says, laughing. “I’m delighted to have a position. We’ve got a prime minister, I’m a huge supporter, I think he’s doing a fantastic job.”

But she adds: “One day it would be lovely to have another female leader of the party and I do think that it was great in Scotland at one point they had female leaders of the parties. My other brief is minister for women and equalities. I do always say more generally, we need more women in politics.

“You know, we’re 50% of the population and we don’t have enough, and whether it’s having senior women, a home secretary like Theresa May or female leaders of parties as we’ve seen in Scotland, it is important in terms of raising girls’ aspirations. Not that politics is the only thing to go into, but I think it sends a clear signal that women can get to the top of their chosen profession.”

If David Cameron’s ‘aspiration nation’ message wins out in May, Nicky Morgan could well be a key beneficiary. And that’s a screen test even her son could agree with.