'I need to go back to school'

Sarah Teather is the first to admit she has a "slightly odd" educational background - something of an irony for the Liberal Democrat MP who last month was chosen by new leader Menzies Campbell as the party's frontbench spokesperson on education.

After just over two years at a comprehensive in Melton Mowbray, her parents switched her to the private Leicester grammar school. But after a few months she fell ill and was in and out of hospital for the next four years, sitting nine GCSEs at home, for which she taught herself. "I hadn't got a lot else to do - there was that or watching the Gulf war on the TV. There are huge gaps in my education - although I passed French with an A, for example, I hadn't really spoken any French."

Despite the disruption to her schooling, she achieved her goal of getting to Cambridge, gaining a 2.1 in natural sciences at St John's College. After a stint as a scientific and medical policy analyst, she won her place in the political history books when at the age of 29 she became the youngest MP in the last parliament, winning Brent East for the Liberal Democrats in the 2003 byelection.

Still just 31, she admits now: "There is a certain irony that someone speaking on schools should have missed so much schooling, but maybe that's a good thing. When you listen to the debate about education, everyone brings their own baggage with them. So you have Tony Blair thinking you should have a posh public school and that is the answer to everyone's education failings, and everyone else bringing their baggage of an unhappy schooling. Well, I spent all my time wishing I was at school!

"In a sense, what happened to me is testament to the fact that if you are bright and well motivated, you can achieve educationally without school. Certainly, I was pretty socially maladjusted - but luckily, at Cambridge everyone was, so it didn't really matter."

The promotion to the education brief was "a total surprise" to her, but one she is clearly delighted with - even if it came just a week before the crucial Commons second reading debate on the government's controversial education and inspections bill.

"I did ODPM [Office of the Deputy Prime Minister] before, but this is a lot more high profile, a much bigger brief and with a lot more legislation going on. Because it also involves a lot of reading, it was a little bit like going back to school. My first big job was to give the Liberal Democrats' response in the second reading debate - one of those big events that tend to end up being quite partisan and tribal. Because we were voting against the bill, it was important that I got across more of our policy. Even if the house is a bit restless, you have to persist with that, because it is important to get that on record."

Teather oozes energy and enthusiasm, but reflects with a sense of frustration on the minimal progress made on the education bill in its first committee stage. "We got through a clause and a half, out of 167 clauses and 18 schedules! It was very slow. I've never done a bill of this size, but I'm told that things speed up."

On the subject of squeezing further concessions out of a reluctant government, Teather is keen to see some further toughening up of admissions procedures. "We've tabled an amendment looking at an anonymised admissions process, whereby the local authority [manages the process] and where schools are not able to see and select on the basis of knowing who the children are, even if they then set their own criteria. I think that is more likely to be accepted than attempting to go back through the 1998 Act and taking out the ability of foundation schools to control their own admissions."

She is not convinced that the Conservatives will maintain their support for the bill. "I'd be surprised if the Tories were not setting themselves up to withdraw their support at third reading, otherwise the bill goes through unamended. We'll have to see who the government wants to play with on this."

Unrealistic though it may be, the Liberal Democrats are also not going to give up on their determination to see the Tomlinson report implemented in full, with a new diploma replacing A-levels and GCSEs. "I think Tomlinson is the big issue we really need to push on, and also narrowing the funding gap between further education and schools."

But can we expect any big surprises or education policy U-turns from the Liberal Democrats? Teather reveals, rather tantalisingly: "We are not going to throw everything out. We're not going to do a Cameron-style 'let's rip it up and start from scratch' at all. But we've all been charged with coming up with new ideas in new areas and there is an expectation that we will push forward.

"I don't think we will go into the next election speaking on exactly the same policies because, apart from anything else, times move on. There are a number of areas I'd like to develop."

One of these, she explains, is school funding, which her predecessor Ed Davey had been exploring. She believes there is a compelling case for more targeted funding to incentivise schools to take children from the most difficult backgrounds. "With league tables and the increasing use of own-admissions authorities in schools, schools have no incentive to take students who are struggling. I am quite interested in looking at whether you can rationalise all the different funding streams and target the money more effectively. I suspect the government knows it is not getting the money to the areas where it is needed. I would encourage them to see whether or not that can be done by focusing it far more on the student."

Another area of interest is a greater focus on speaking and listening skills among primary school pupils - one area of the recent Rose report that went largely unnoticed. "Of course everyone talked about synthetic phonics, but Rose also said that poor speaking and listening skills were a problem. I'd like to develop some work on that. We are setting up a commission and we have got some quite interesting people on it."

As for top-up fees, on which the Liberal Democrats remain the only party to promise free university tuition, Teather says the party is standing firm. "I see no reason to change that policy whatsoever. All the things we have warned about in terms of increased student bankruptcies are happening. All the evidence suggests that students from disadvantaged backgrounds end up working much longer hours in order to fund themselves. And we haven't even seen the impact yet of those top-up fees going through. It is the government that needs to do a rethink."

Finally, Teather recognises it really is time for her to go back to school. "What I'd really like to do is spend some time in a classroom. Ideally slightly invisibly, not at the front teaching, but absorbing what's going on. From my perspective, that's quite important, because I've not been taught in the comprehensive system for 20 years. I do a lot of going round to schools in my constituency, but this would have to be somewhere different - somewhere I wasn't recognised, I think."