Tristram Hunt: 'It's chaos, with free schools landing in the middle of nowhere'

As Labour ponders its iffy performance in recent elections and opinion polls, MPs and commentators inevitably speculate as to who could be the party's next leader. Also inevitably, the shadow education secretary, Tristram Hunt, is on several lists. Elected in 2010, elevated to the shadow cabinet only in October, and just turned 40, he could hardly be a fresher face. He also offers charm, telegenic good looks and a middle-class background.

So how does he rate his prospects? He laughs. "A poll in the Mail on Sunday said I was considered more stupid and uncommunicative than any other Labour frontbencher." (In fact, the poll covered just five possible candidates and asked voters to rate them for intelligence and being "in touch".) But would he like to be leader? He shakes his head, a little irritably. "I don't want to get into it. I know the way these things are played out." Then he tells me, as he does several times more, that Ed Miliband is making "a really big critique" of "the existing model of political economy". If that seems a rather academic way of putting it, it's because Hunt has a Cambridge PhD in history and several learned books to his name – including a biography of Engels, a study of the English civil war and the newly published Ten Cities That Made an Empire – and he still lectures at Queen Mary, University of London.

Because he's the son of a life peer, a meteorologist who once led Labour on Cambridge city council, he's an Hon as well as a Dr. His connections are with Labour's cerebral upper-middle-class wing, traditionally based in Hampstead, north London. His great-aunt was Peggy Jay, a Labour stalwart of London county council, and husband of Douglas Jay, the cabinet minister who said that, on health, nutrition and education, "the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves". Hunt went to the fee-charging University College school (UCS), Hampstead, and then, like his father, to Trinity, the richest Cambridge college. His political mentor was Peter Mandelson, widely thought to have used his dark arts to secure Hunt's selection as a candidate for the safe Stoke-on-Trent Central seat on the eve of the 2010 general election.

His predecessor as shadow education secretary, Stephen Twigg, was criticised for not offering more forceful opposition to Michael Gove and failing to put clear red water between Labour and Tory policies. To the critics' disappointment, Hunt, though using harsher language – calling Gove, for example, an ideological zealot – shows no sign of wishing to dismantle the education secretary's work. Education policy has been essentially bipartisan for 30 years and, on Labour's side particularly, is a nightmare of compromises. Hunt will not make a dramatic break. "The history of British statecraft," he says, "is to work with what you inherit and try to mould it in constructive and progressive ways."

So he will not, for example, close Gove's free schools and academies or hand them over to local authorities. He won't even promise not to have more such schools. Nor, pleading a legal minefield, will he change the funding contracts that Gove makes with each individual school – widely criticised as giving the secretary of state tyrannical powers. He accepts that some academies and free schools, which can decide for themselves which children to admit (though they must observe a code of practice), use criteria that may indirectly favour bright and/or middle-class children. But he will not "throw things into the air" by restoring local authority control of admissions; he will "beef up" oversight of the process.

New free schools, however, will be allowed only where there's a shortage of places and Gove's babies will be "re-connected to other schools". "Gove has gone off the rails. He sees every school as an island. It's chaos with free schools landing in the middle of nowhere. There isn't enough transparency and accountability. Some academies won't even reply to MPs' letters."

It's this "fragmentation and atomisation" of the school system, Hunt says, that increases risks such as the hardline Muslim infiltration of governing bodies that is alleged in Birmingham. There can't be adequate oversight from a desk in Whitehall, he argues. "We shouldn't make this too party political," Hunt says, "because some governors allegedly involved were local authority appointments. But some of those schools were fragile, it seems that issues were highlighted, no action was taken and then they were allowed to convert to academy status with even less oversight."

He also thinks Ofsted's remit is partly to blame. "It doesn't have a strong enough regard for teaching a broad and balanced curriculum. Some of those schools were rated 'outstanding' and they may have ticked every box on literacy and numeracy but they have to be broader than that."

He has a big idea for better holding schools to account and reducing the risks of future "Trojan horse" operations infiltrating school governance. He would appoint independent directors of school standards across the country, operating locally but usually straddling council boundaries. The proposal comes from a policy review by the former Labour education secretary David Blunkett, and Hunt embraced it partly, I guess, because it allows him to deflect awkward questions – for example, about whether he supports more faith schools, Islamic or otherwise – by saying they would be matters for the new directors. They would oversee schools of all types, bringing them into "partnership", challenging underperformance and, where new schools are needed, deciding who should run them. "The local authority will be able to compete with academy chains and parent-led or social enterprise groups to run a new school. These things should be part of a public conversation – in America they have open meetings – whereas, under Gove, it's behind closed doors."

Hunt is adamant that he would reverse Gove's policy of allowing academies and free schools to employ unqualified teachers, a pledge that resonates with parents. What would also resonate, I suggest, is a pledge not to allow profit-making companies to run state schools, as happens in Sweden. Gove wants to bring in for-profit providers, doesn't he? "He denies it. But if there's a majority Conservative government, there will be for-profit schooling. There's a strong mood music in the thinktanks. There's no educational argument for it, it's ideology." So why isn't he shouting warnings from the rooftops? "If we haven't made enough of it, we'll make a lot more of it in the run-up to the election."

I ask what he thinks of Gove's decision to axe 20th-century American classics such as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird from the English literature GCSE syllabus in favour of more venerable English writers such as Dickens and Austen. "We shouldn't have a left-right battle on this," Hunt says. "I shouldn't come in in 2015 and say everybody's got to read Arnold Bennett. We used to criticise the Soviet Union for rewriting the curriculum for political purposes. Now we've got an education secretary who rewrites the history curriculum over a long weekend. I'm not getting into these arguments about what should be on the English or history syllabus. Nobody focuses on what should be on the vocational and technical curriculum. There are no leaks to Sunday papers about that."

So we do talk for a while about vocational and technical education, where Labour proposes "a revolution in apprenticeships, putting business in the driving seat" and new Institutes of Technical Education to provide "gold-standard delivery" of a proposed technical baccalaureate. The latter would be one of two optional streams – the other would be a general (presumably mainly academic) baccalaureate _ within a national baccalaureate for 14- to 19-year-olds.

Would these supersede GCSEs and A-levels, as many teachers wish? Hunt replies – to my complete lack of surprise – that they wouldn't. "But GCSEs and A-levels won't be the be-all and end-all. We're trying to get away from the exam factory model." He explains that the new Bacc will have four components: the established exams, including those that lead to vocational qualifications; an extended project; maths and English for all; and "personal development skills". All this, I say, is remarkably similar to what was recommended in 2004 (the Tomlinson report) to acclaim in the educational world, but vetoed by Tony Blair. "It was vetoed," Hunt says, "because David Miliband [schools minister at the time] couldn't convince Blair of the arguments for it. Over the next 10 years, we'll revisit the arguments."

What will he do about fee-charging schools? "We shall urge them to pay more regard to their founding principles, which are to help poor children locally." Even Tories urge that, but will the schools lose their tax perks? "Do we want governments to decide what's a charity and what's not?" Surely yes, I reply, if they are to be excused taxes. "I know this is a passion for many people, but it's not where my energies will be."

Where will his children go to school? He says the eldest is at a state primary and the other two will go there in time. What about secondary school? "They will proceed in the state sector." But he won't rule out other options for ever because, heaven forbid, one of his children might have problems that made it necessary to consider them. I say his Stoke-on-Trent constituents "rule out options" because they can't afford them. He smiles. "Every year, judge me by where my kids are at school."

Hunt's answers will seem tepid to many Labour supporters, but education is tricky for opposition parties because any voter enthusiasm for boldly radical policies is likely to be far outweighed by parental anxieties about change disrupting their children's schooling. Almost everyone agrees he's nicer and more thoughtful than most politicians but, after receiving good reviews at first, his parliamentary performances against Gove get, at best, a beta-minus. As for the leadership, several Westminster sources put his chances at close to zero, and doubt he'll even be a candidate. But then I turn to John Rentoul's biography of Tony Blair which recalls that, in 1989-90, academics asked party members for their views on 13 prominent Labour figures who might have become leader. The 13 did not include Blair.