Damian Green has an image problem. It is not that he minds being seen as thoughtful and caring, with a genuine desire to improve the teacher’s lot. The problem is that people cannot understand what he is doing in the Conservative party.

He hopes that it will become clear with the publication next Tuesday of his pamphlet, “Better Learning”, which he describes as “first thoughts and basic principles of the direction we need to go in”.

“We have become more centralised than ever before and need a radical shift in favour of local autonomy,” says Mr Green, the MP for Ashford since 1997, who was appointed shadow education secretary last year.

“The Education Secretary is seeking to be headteacher of 25,000 schools, and nobody is that good, not Estelle, not me, and we have got to loosen the reins.”

Teachers’ morale, he believes, is damaged in the drive for control.

Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat education spokesman, says: “He has an enormously supportive approach. To hear a Tory spokesman often quoting the National Union of Teachers as his source of information makes one wonder if the world has gone mad.”

Mr Green, 46, says: “I have always been the teachers’ friend and the fact that it is a bit odd in a Conservative politician is one of the things I most want to change.”

He comes from a background, “steeped in education, like many Welsh families”. After Damian, her youngest child, started school, his mother Audrey trained as a teacher. His uncle was the head of the Catholic primary school Damian attended in Barry, south Wales, before the family moved to Reading when his father was appointed the first editor of the Reading Evening Post.

Mr Green went to Reading grammar school, and Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a first in politics, philosophy and economics. But he was not a swot. He admits to an “anoraky degree of knowledge of pop music from the 60s to the 80s” and played competitive football into his 40s.

He followed his father into journalism, specialising in business on The Times and at Channel 4. He then worked for John Major in the Prime Minister’s policy unit, before being elected as an MP. It was at Oxford that he met his wife, Alicia Collinson, a barrister.

They were married in 1988 and have two daughters, Felicity 12, and Verity, eight. The family spends the week in Acton, west London, and the weekends at their bungalow on the North Downs, overlooking the Weald of Kent.

Sir Robert Balchin, former chairman of the Grant Maintained Schools Association, says: “His wife, who is artistically inclined, always draws a beautiful Christmas card which captures moments from the family’s year. He is a very devoted family man and father.”

His daughters attend private day schools in London. He justifies his choice not to use state education. “They are both at schools which they enjoy and at which they are doing well. Any politician who did not do what they saw as the best for their children’s education, in order to help their political career, would be a lousy parent.

“I applaud Tony Blair for taking the brickbats for not sending his children to local schools. Anyway, people assume the politician in the family makes the decision. My wife and I decide these things equally.”