Back to school with Lord Baker

Ben, an articulate 14-year-old hard at work in the school design and proto-typing centre, is explaining to Lord Baker of Dorking how 3D printing works. Baker, a former Tory education secretary, listens intently before declaring the technology ‘marvellous’. This coming July will mark the 25th anniversary of his leaving the Department for Education — but Lord Baker, who turns 80 this year, has never quite stopped the school reform that he started.

We’re at the University Technical College (UTC) in Sheffield, one of 17 such schools which has opened in recent years following the decision by Baker and his late friend Ron Dearing, the former Post Office boss, to make the remodelling of the English schools system their retirement project.

Baker is an extraordinary force of nature. Beyond the still slick hair and wide smile — lampooned to such good effect by Spitting Image and cartoonists in the 1980s — there is tenacity, energy and a determination not to be diverted when he is pursuing a pet project.