“I had multiple physics teachers throughout my GCSEs: one of them had a laser that he’d shine in our eyes - I think he was drunk.”

Laura Trott’s memories of her schooldays contrast sharply with the setting she is in. The shadow education secretary is visiting Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre in East London, where lessons are structured, “horseplay” is banned and the only sounds filling the Victorian-tiled corridors are footsteps.

As we weave into classrooms in the grade-II listed building, A-level students wearing sharp black blazers sit quietly in rows, eyes trained on the teacher.

The only potentially spiky moment comes when a student tells the Conservative ex-Treasury minister he supports a wealth tax (beware “perverse consequences”, she warns him).

It’s no coincidence we’re here: the highly selective and successful free school is a case study in how Trott believes schools should be run, and she believes it excels in areas in which she argues Labour is failing, particularly behaviour management.

Its success is a direct result, she says, of “the freedoms these schools enjoy, the extraordinary hard work of their pupils and the discipline and ethos instilled by their brilliant teachers”.

Behaviour in schools

Sitting in the principal’s office, Trott reflects that high-performing schools “tend to have quite similar attributes, particularly around behaviour, zero tolerance, adherence to high standards, uniform”.

Behaviour in schools has been one of Trott’s most consistent themes since taking on her role. On one hand, it is a canny political move that has allowed her to capitalise on concerns from headteachers and teachers about rising levels of disruption in schools.

And the Sevenoaks MP knows how to land a political message, having served in Downing Street under David Cameron, including as head of strategic communications, and later working at the political consultancy and public relations firm Portland Communications.

But there’s a personal element to this, too: like most politicians, her view of education is very much shaped by her own experiences. “I had a brilliant school, but there were lots of challenges there,” she says of her Surrey comprehensive. “There was bad behaviour, and it makes it so much harder for individuals to learn.”

This meant she “had a lot to catch up on” when arriving at the University of Oxford to study history and economics.

Headteachers face ‘pushback’ on exclusions

In her speech at the Conservative Party’s annual conference earlier this month, she talked of being at a school “where teachers are sometimes locked in cupboards, things are thrown in the classroom and fights break out in the hallway”. It is necessary, she told delegates in Manchester, to be “honest about the need for permanent exclusions”.

But, given that exclusions and suspensions are at a record high, is there any evidence that more are needed?

Heads face too much “pushback” on exclusions - including from local authorities, she insists, pointing to a recent conversation with a leader who’d had to “fight” to exclude a student who’d brought in a knife.

‘Headteachers who have banned phones are absolutely evangelical’

Trott understands the impact of real-life examples and has an ample supply of them.

Her concern is for staff, too - and again, she draws from personal experience.

“My sister-in-law is a teacher,” she says. “She was pinned by a child at a school, and nothing happened to that child. It’s completely extraordinary that that is allowed to happen.”

Trott wants a “presumption” that children who assault teachers or carry knives are relocated out of a mainstream school, via an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

Pressed on the practical difference this would make to schools, she tells Tes it would “strengthen the hands of headteachers to know that they are absolutely able to exclude on these grounds”.

“There is no support for heads to have zero tolerance, and that has a big impact on the attainment of a school, but also on teacher recruitment,” she asserts.

Alongside a tougher line on behaviour, she wants an increase in high-quality alternative provision (AP) settings for children who cannot cope in mainstream.

Few teachers would argue with Trott’s proposition that classroom behaviour is worsening: 81 per cent feel the number of pupils exhibiting violent and abusive behaviours has increased, according to a union survey.

But does she agree with the factors frequently cited by teachers as driving the problem, such as crumbling public services under the previous government?

She puts the onus back onto pupils. “Everybody’s responsible for their own behaviour,” she states, but adds that “intensive care” AP should be linked with social services.

One challenge schools face in enforcing behaviour policies is the increasingly fractious nature of their relationships with parents - a trend that many leaders are seeing since the pandemic, along with huge volumes of complaint letters, often generated by artificial intelligence and sent to multiple organisations.

Trott backs another amendment to the bill, added in the Lords by former academies minister Baroness Barran, which would bring in a single route for all parental complaints.

SEND system pressures

And one of the biggest areas of complaint is special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), at a time when the system is widely recognised as being in crisis.

But Trott has been notably quiet on SEND - a politically sensible decision and one that has not gone unnoticed by her Labour counterpart Bridget Phillipson.

During a snappy exchange in Parliament on Monday, the education secretary accused Trott of “confected outrage” and pointed out that her conference speech omitted to mention SEND.

‘I really worry about the RISE teams. We’re going back to having a cup of tea and talking’

So, what does Trott make of criticism that her party failed to get a grip on SEND while in power?

She blames “mixed” implementation of the 2014 reforms that introduced education, health and care plans (EHCPs), with local authorities again coming in for criticism.

The one area she admits her party “should’ve done more on” is home to school transport, which she worries is not preparing children who are “physically able to get on to public transport” for adult life.

With spending in this area due to reach nearly £2 billion this year, her concerns are understandable - although arguably the costs are being driven upwards by wider pressure in the SEND system.

With that in mind, do the problems we’re seeing now suggest EHCPs have had their day?

“No, I don’t [believe that] at all. I think the fundamental point of the EHCP, which is writing down the condition that a child has, is really important for parents and for schools. And that’s why I think we’ve seen so much worry from parents who’ve received very mixed messages over what exactly is going to happen,” says Trott.

On the delay to the government’s White Paper containing plans for SEND reform, she says the desire to take time to get this right is “understandable”, but that “they should not have scared parents earlier this year and then left them in limbo with little certainty”.

Tes revealed in May that the DfE was considering whether EHCPs were the “right vehicle”.

Trott’s response here is typical of her general approach as she nears 12 months in post. She has always been careful to focus on areas where there is alignment between parents and schools, such as behaviour, and where there are dissenting voices within the sector, for example, on academy freedoms.

Mobile phone bans in schools

One area she has pushed hard on that attracts strong support from parents as well as teachers is on mobile phone bans in schools. But this is not mere political expediency: “I feel like I’m on a crusade,” says the mother of three.

Most schools already operate an “out of sight” policy on phones. What benefits would a legal ban bring?

Keeping phones in bags or lockers doesn’t stop pupils from using them in toilets or sneaking them out at breaktimes, she responds.

“We’ve seen that where schools have implemented a full ban, it’s had spectacular results,” says Trott, referring to a school in her constituency that switched to using sealed pouches for phones. “But there are schools that have lagged behind or haven’t seen the difference that it makes.”

‘I find it reckless, the approach that Labour are taking to school improvement’

So why does she think only a minority of secondary schools ban phones from their site or collect them in?

“We’ve come to a point whereby this is just accepted as normalised in our schools, but it doesn’t have to be this way: headteachers who have made this change are absolutely evangelical.”

Again, there’s a political pragmatism to her approach, as well as a personal drive. Those who have worked with Trott say she isn’t blindly ideological, but understands education.

She helped to write the Conservatives’ 2015 manifesto, focusing on education and family policy, and says her current brief is what she’s “always wanted to do”, albeit ideally it’d be in government.

“I would love, love, love to be running the school system,” she beams.

Trott is the third most popular Conservative politician according to YouGov - behind Brexit negotiator David Frost and former prime minister John Major - and she exudes energy (“Beneath the perfectly turned-out exterior beats the heart of a discoing Duracell Bunny”, according to a breathless profile in Tatler).

RISE plans are ‘reckless’

Part of Trott’s popularity may lie in her ability to code-switch between audiences, for example, in our interview, she turns, unprompted, to the more detailed area of regional support and intervention (RISE) teams.

“I really worry about the RISE teams,” she says. “We’re going back to having a cup of tea and talking about how your school can be better.”

While some might see this as an overly simplistic take on a complex area of policy, her use of everyday language is often effective.

She goes on to query what the evidence base is for the RISE approach, and where the accountability will sit.

“I find it beyond extraordinary and frankly reckless, the approach that [Labour] are taking to school improvement,” she says.

Meanwhile, she points out that plans to open 44 free schools have been paused for a year, which she calls a “tragedy”. Between her and new shadow education minister Nick Timothy - ex-New Schools Network director and former adviser to Theresa May when she was prime minister - Labour may face pressure on this front in Parliament.

‘Stepping stone’ qualification seems ‘nonsensical’

Trott has strong words, too, for Labour’s plans for a new “stepping stone” qualification for students who fail English and maths GCSEs, which it set out this week in a White Paper on post-16 qualifications.

“The idea that you have this lower standard qualification, it just seems nonsensical to me, and it’s just writing people off.”

Tes puts it to her that these students will still take the resit, just a year later, after additional support.

“They’ll get funnelled into something, and then they’ll never retake it,” she warns.

Her focus on high standards fits with the Conservatives’ wider approach, but again she makes it personal.

“I reacted in such an instinctive way…because I know the types of people that get written off - I’ve seen it - and it is infuriating that we think that certain people can’t reach certain outcomes.

“It makes me very cross.”

But with a curriculum and assessment review on its way, the Schools Bill coming back into the Commons and - eventually - a plan on SEND, Trott may want to keep her powder dry for now.

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