Builders’ curses are still ringing in the air as Stephen Twigg, the recently appointed education minister for young people and learning, arrives at Highgate Wood school in the north London borough of Haringey to open a new block built through a private finance initiative. The minister takes a tour of the pound;4 million building, hurrying along the sparkly-floored corridors and putting his head around the doors of a series of arts rooms while cleaners stand by their mops, impassive. He makes reasonable small talk, confiding in the new food tech lab that rock cakes were his speciality at school. The chair of governors laughs obligingly.

Stephen Twigg maintains his expression of delighted surprise throughout the tour, even when one teacher gives the wrong answer to his question. “Are you enjoying it?” he asks, indicating the new facilities with a wave of his hand.

“No,” she says. “Not really. Because I’m not ready to start teaching.”

As is the way with building projects, this one has gone up to the wire; teachers’ desks arrived only hours before the minister’s visit, and the planting around the door to the improbably named “Wren building” took place in the afternoon. Elsewhere in the borough, the school term started late as PFI partner Jarvis struggled to meet its deadlines. From a platform in the school hall, headteacher Pauline Ashbee describes the “great thrill and considerable relief” she feels now the first phase of the work is finished. Stephen Twigg nods his approval as she says: “We now have the high quality teaching and learning environment that staff and students have richly deserved for far too long.”

Taking the microphone, he declares himself “acutely aware of the challenges we face in educating young people in London”, the amplification of his voice fluctuating with the movement of his head.

Stephen Twigg will be forever linked in the public imagination with his 1997 general election victory in Enfield over the sitting Conservative candidate, Michael Portillo. The famous smirk when he discovered he had beaten his rival and Tory defence minister has had little reason to leave his face since. Following a spell on the back benches, he was appointed deputy leader of the House after returning to parliament in 2001 with a more than trebled majority. “I learned more about how government works in a year as Robin Cook’s deputy than I did in four years as a backbencher,” he says. “Having done that, it was great to come here, and I couldn’t have wanted a better job.”

The A-level debacle has provided a baptism of fire. With the whole department under pressure, the mood, he says, has been one of “taking the issue very, very seriously”. What is his style in a crisis? “I tend to be very much in favour of openness and honesty,” he says, his hardworking eyebrows moving up and down his large forehead. “We all make mistakes and if you make a mistake the best way to deal with it is to acknowledge it and explain it.”

Stephen Twigg - born on Christmas Day 1966 - will come of age in his new job under Education Secretary Estelle Morris. He has in his in-tray a complex cocktail of responsibilities that includes youth, strategy for London schools, inclusion and - since a recent rejig of duties with schools minister Cathy Ashton - special needs, ethnic minority achievement and citizenship. The London brief alone could occupy several lifetimes and Stephen Twigg is careful to stress his consultative approach. “What I’m trying to do is to ensure that I’m in dialogue with all of the key players - teaching unions, governing bodies, schools themselves, local education authorities, further and higher education sectors, voluntary sector, the community,” he says. “We’re trying to ensure that as we develop the strategy we get it right and don’t ignore any of the dimensions.”

Perhaps because he has come straight from the recall of Parliament and a debate about Iraq, Stephen Twigg uses an oddly military array of phrases to describe the Government’s approach to school improvement in London. Even though almost one school in four in the capital is failing to reach the government GCSE benchmark of 30 per cent of pupils gaining five or more A*-Cs, he prefers, he says, to “raise his sights” above the topic of school closure. “We now have other weapons in our armoury, for instance we’ve seen the opening of the academies this term. School closure is an ultimate option, but much better that we use the other weapons we’ve got, which are the academies, new headteachers, innovative solutions such as federations of schools, extended schools and smaller schools.”

He cites with approval the planned broad age span at the new city academy at Bexley, the opening of which he attended last month. “There will be on that site provision from the age of three to the age of 18. That’s something exciting and innovative for us to learn from.” There are plans for an all-age school in his Enfield constituency, he says; the growing pupil population in London demands the building of new schools, which will be used as an opportunity for experimentation along these and other lines.

Although discussions on a strategy for London were under way before he was appointed - and he must make room for the new commissioner for London schools due to be appointed later this month - Stephen Twigg aims to make his own impression on the capital’s schools. “There are so many aspects to this that I do have an opportunity to make my own mark.”

His long-standing interest in crime (he is a member of the Prime Minister’s street crime action group, to which 10 chief constables report) sits easily with one of his key concerns in the education remit - behaviour. “I’m very conscious of how far discipline in schools is a set of issues that matters in London perhaps even more than it does in other parts of the country,” he says, in his wordy, careful ministerial-speak. He believes pupil indiscipline is largely responsible for the high number of London teachers leaving the profession. Eighteen London local education authorities qualified this summer for a share of the pound;60 million announced by Gordon Brown in April to tackle troublesome pupil behaviour. “I think there’ll be a lot to learn from that in terms of the truancy sweeps, police in schools, behaviour and education support teams in schools, more learning support units, that could make a real difference to parental views about schools in London, and to the young people themselves,” says Stephen Twigg.

The Government is “absolutely committed” to the idea of police based in schools; more than 100 officers are already based on school premises around London. He has no problem with the idea of arrests on site. “If crimes are being committed in schools, that’s something that may happen. But I don’t see the prime purpose of police in schools as catching criminals.”

One of the Government’s aims in London is to reduce the number of concerned parents opting for private education. Highgate Wood school is a case in point; children from the leafy hilltop homes that overlook the Wren building tend to go elsewhere, Ofsted has noted. In the finely calibrated hierarchy of London schools, Highgate Wood is greatly sought after by parents from further afield but avoided by some on its doorstep, despite an improving record of exam success (44 per cent of pupils gaining five A*-C grades at GCSE last summer).

How will Mr Twigg get local children through the doors of this school and others like it? “A local view can form that may have been accurate five years ago but wouldn’t be accurate today,” he says. “Part of what we’ve got to do is increase community links - parents can be great ambassadors, and some attitudes are best challenged by them.” Haringey is one of the high-crime boroughs piloting behaviour initiatives; Highgate Wood will be one of those with a police officer in school.

Stephen Twigg, who joined the Labour Party aged 15, is the product of comprehensive education; he was the first Southgate comprehensive student to go to Oxford, where he read philosophy, politics and economics at Balliol College. Now he takes soundings from his old school; he is on the governing bodies of Southgate, and of Merryhills, a primary in his constituency.

Southgate school is far from bog standard; it is a beacon school and going for science specialist status. Liberal and high-achieving, it is one of the biggest schools in north London, with more than 1,600 pupils. “I would never want to move away from the comprehensive ethos,” says headteacher Anthony Wilde. “Stephen is an excellent product of the school and I’d love to think we had lots of budding Stephen Twiggs.”

On being a governor, Stephen Twigg says: “I do find it immensely useful. But it is strange sitting round a governing body table with people who taught you 20 years ago,” he says. He is generous with his time in school - addressing the school council, getting involved in anti-bullying work - and seems to enjoy contact with students. “Kids always say, ‘Do you live in a mansion?’ ‘Did you come in a Bentley?’ I say, ‘No, I walked. I don’t drive a car.’” Enfield heads have his ear through the medium of Southgate headteacher Anthony Wilde. They are unanimous about the single most important issue facing London heads. “Staffing,” says Mr Wilde. “We hope the government is going to listen about recruitment, about London weighting. That’s our clearest message.”

The same message comes from Highgate Wood school. “Recruitment and affordable housing are key,” says Pauline Ashbee. Those in the vital middle management tier are often the ones worst affected by the London housing market, as they start families and want to buy homes.

Despite leaving behind him an impression that “he appears to be listening, appears to understand what the issues are”, Stephen Twigg has no ready solution to the housing crisis. “It is a big challenge that we’re not going to sort out overnight,” he admits. He proposes involving teachers in shared ownership of private housing - “Where there is a housing development close to a school, some should be set aside for teachers, maybe on a shared ownership basis” - as well as making sure education gets its share of any new key worker schemes. He seems surprised to hear that the London borough of Islington, where he was a protege of the then leader Margaret Hodge and a councillor for five years, has only 10 housing places available for the whole of social services and education.

He lives alone, in Southgate - “I have a flat in a very nice road” - with his immediate relatives nearby. His grandmother - “a traditional East End Labour voter” - lives in neighbouring Barnet. Both Stephen Twigg’s parents were communists; his mother died 10 years ago. What would she have made of his position in this government? “My father has made the journey to a position where his politics and mine are actually quite similar, in a way I suspect my mother wouldn’t have done,” he says. “My mother was more hardline.”

Despite being a keen Blairite, Stephen Twigg has shown he is his own man, backing student maintenance grants during the last election campaign and joining the National Liberal club because it’s convenient. Asked to place himself on a Tony Blair loyalty scale of one to 10, he throws back his head and laughs. “I’m very loyal. I genuinely believe he’s doing a super job.”

Stephen Twigg used the opportunity of his first ministerial address to the House on July 12 to speak out against homophobic bullying. Although often described as the first openly gay president of the National Union of Students (1990-92), he was not openly gay at school, in the mid-Eighties. “I was out to one or two friends in the upper-sixth but I never had the courage to come out at school,” he says. “Southgate was and is a pretty liberal sort of school but I wasn’t sure what the reaction would be. Teaching unions have done marvellous work on tackling homophobic bullying and I want to pay tribute to that because it’s an area that was neglected by everybody for a long time.”