In recent months, Justine Greening has seemed like an education secretary transformed. It is one of the paradoxes of June’s snap general election that, despite the government losing its majority - and her own constituency vote in Putney falling - Greening has emerged as a stronger figure with a tighter grip on her department.

Now, in an exclusive start-of-term Tes interview, she has used that authority to demand pay restraint among academy chief executives, while arguing for classroom teachers’ salaries to “remain competitive”.

It was only two months ago that Greening gave the majority of teachers a 1 per cent pay rise for the current school year - a real-terms cut once inflation is accounted for.

But the pay-review body that made the recommendation, in line with its mandate from government, warned of “a real risk” that schools would not be able to recruit and retain high-quality teachers.

Sitting in her seventh-floor office in the Department for Education, overlooking Westminster Abbey, Greening now says “those are risks that need to be taken seriously”.

This week’s lifting of the public sector pay cap has been widely anticipated, and for those looking for indications of what that could mean for teachers, Greening has a positive message. “I think it is important that teachers’ pay remains competitive. I think that’s part of how we make sure we have a really successful teaching profession,” she says, tapping the table to emphasise the last three words.

‘Sounds reassuring’

For Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, her comments “certainly sound reassuring” after seven years of pay erosion.

“It comes at a time when we are continuing to see examples of teachers leaving the profession, and school leaders feel frustrated if they are being expected to fund teachers’ increases without [the government] putting the money in,” he says.

Those teacher-supply problems were underlined this week when the National Audit Office warned that secondary teacher numbers were falling and that the government “cannot show” that its solutions are working (see bit.ly/CannotShow).

However, pay is only one part of Greening’s plan to address the teacher recruitment and retention crisis. Following her party’s disastrous election performance, the Tories’ highest-profile education pledges - new grammar schools and the scrapping of free lunches for all infants - were ditched. But Greening points to one manifesto promise that has survived: to “offer forgiveness on student-loan repayments while they are teaching”. She will, she says, be bringing forward proposals about this “shortly”.

And at a time when one of her own junior ministers, Jo Johnson, is threatening to fine universities that can’t justify paying their vice chancellors more than the prime minister, Greening indicates that highly paid but poorly performing academy leaders are in her sights. “We do think there has to be pay restraint, and that is linked to performance,” she says.

“They will need to clearly demonstrate to the public and to parents that the level of investment in that leadership is worth it.”

But that does not mean the most controversial of academy pay packets will be blocked. When asked whether the £400,000-plus salary of Harris Federation chief executive Sir Daniel Moynihan is justified, her answer is yes. “There is no doubt that Harris academies have transformed the educational outcomes for many, many children,” insists Greening.

Following the aborted false starts of two major Tory schools policies - 100 per cent academisation and more academic selection - Greening now has a golden opportunity to put her own mark on education. And with 10 Downing Street weakened following the election, she appears more assertive in arguing her case within government or, at least, allowing behind-closed-doors arguments to become public. School funding is a case in point.

After polling day, DfE sources used their newly found freedom to distance Greening from the Tory manifesto’s widely criticised failure to promise to protect real-terms per-pupil funding. And ahead of the summer recess she persuaded the Treasury to let her reallocate DfE resources to put an extra £1.3 billion into school funding over the next two years.

Greening is quick to highlight the work to put schools “on a proper funding footing”, but emphasises that money is not everything. She says: “Investment is absolutely critical, but so is having the right strategy”.

The secretary of state certainly gives the impression of someone with a plan in place. In front of Greening, on the large meeting table in her office, sits a set of carefully ordered handwritten notes underlined with different-coloured inks.

If education secretaries’ tenures have themes, Michael Gove’s could have been academic rigour, while Nicky Morgan’s would have been character education. And there is no doubt about the priority for Justine Greening: social mobility.

New agendas

It is an issue that Theresa May, too, emphasised when she entered Downing Street in July 2016. But the visions of the prime minister and her education secretary seemed uncomfortably misaligned.

Greening’s lack of enthusiasm for her boss’s flagship policy of opening new grammar schools was one of Westminster’s worst-kept secrets. In speeches about social mobility, her dutiful recitation of the case for grammar schools contrasted with the obvious personal conviction with which she delivered other passages. With grammar schools now off the agenda, it feels as if she can pursue social mobility in the evidence-based manner that befits her status as a professional accountant.

“You will see the word social mobility all around this department because fundamentally what I want to see is a level playing field, so that all of our children and young people get the best possible start,” she says. “I want to see improvement in the schools that have not been lifted by the reforms we have had, and that is why we have put in place the Opportunity Areas and a more place-based approach.”

As she starts her second school year in charge at the DfE, it is clear that Greening is not seeking a clean break with the past, though. The education secretary voices enthusiastic support for much of her predecessors’ reforms.

“When you look at things like key stage 2 results, the GCSEs and A-level results, you are really starting to see the fruits of all the reform and school improvement now coming through in terms of the outcomes that young people are getting,” she says.

And although the government abandoned plans to turn all schools into academies before she came into office, and last October she ditched proposals that could have led to the conversion of all schools in particular local authority areas, she is clear that the government would like “all schools over time to become academies”.

But there are changes of emphasis from previous Conservative education secretaries.

“I think the priority is about helping schools to continue to academise where that can be part of a school-improvement strategy, but as we saw with the March White Paper, having a focus on “outstanding schools” becoming academies for the sake of [it], for me, is not the priority. The priority is making sure that we do school improvement.”