He is head of humanities and responsible for careers and work experience at a tough inner city South Yorkshire comprehensive. He has not yet definitely made his mind up which party he will vote for.

Education will be one of the issues which determine his decision, but law and order and health will be important factors.

He believes teaching has become much more difficult over the past 10 years, particularly in urban schools.

He would like to see convincing policies which would enable staff to get on with the job of teaching instead of having to concentrate on disciplining pupils.

Measures to improve discipline and cut class sizes are educational priorities for him, though class sizes alone may not help.

He says: “If you’ve got 31 motivated children in the classroom, that can be easier than 15 very difficult children in one classroom, so in that sense numbers are not an issue,” he says.

He would like to see not just more resources put into schools, but fairer resources to take account of the difficulties schools like his experience.

He would also like to see a period of stability in the curriculum. It is highly unlikely he will vote Conservative because, he says, he is “disgusted with the way teachers have been treated”. But he prefers to keep an open mind on whether Labour or the Liberal Democrats will get his vote.