With a Name Like his, Ed Balls’ Schooldays Taught him a Lesson in Resilience
The former Education Secretary and unlikely Strictly… star Ed Balls talks about his education…
- by Ed Balls
My formal education started at Bawburgh County Primary, in Norfolk. It was a very small school, with only three classes; I remember being taken in by my mum on the first day, and getting a chair and a pencil – but no rubber.
Mrs Sewell didn’t allow pupils to erase their work, and having a small piece of rubber that you could pass to friends under the table was considered an act of extreme rebellion.
When I was seven and a half, my family moved to Nottingham, and I started at Crossdale Primary School, where my first day was catastrophic. It began well enough – I found my class, paid my 50p dinner money for the week, and started to get settled.
At break time, though, racing down the wing during a game of football, I slipped and slid down a very muddy slope. I was taken inside by the playground supervisor, and had to spend the rest of the morning sitting on newspaper from the painting area, until my mum arrived with replacement uniform.
Actually, now I think about it, my first day at Nottingham High School, when I was 11, was also relatively traumatic, because I didn’t realise until I arrived that I was wearing the wrong tie; my mum had made a mistake and bought one for a completely different school.
Luckily, they were able to sort me out with the correct neckwear at reception – with a surname like mine, I really didn’t need another reason to attract the wrong sort of attention.
I would say that teasing related to my name probably started when I was around 8, and lasted until I was well into my teens.
I suppose it was inevitable; but while it was tough I just tried to shrug it off. I was strongly built, and quick with comebacks (a favourite during my teenage years was, “You think it’s bad for me; just imagine how much worse it is for my sister, Ophelia…”), and so I never withdrew into myself.
If anything, it made me jut my chin out a little bit more, and put myself right out there.
Alongside the issue of what I was called, I was also dealing throughout my schooling with what I only realised much later on was an internalised stammer. When it was my turn to read aloud in class, or I wanted to make a point in a debate, the words often simply wouldn’t come.
But I guess, rather than giving up, I was the kind of person to keep on having a go. It was only after I was criticised for the halting delivery of my first speech as Secretary of State that I sought professional help.
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I started weekly therapy, and finally – two years later – went public, which turned out to be the most important step. That was a real learning point for me; understanding that whatever your issue, it’s concealment which causes the most stress and makes it hard to deal with.
Once you are open about who you are, you move from a position of weakness to one of strength.
Politics runs in my family, but it was one particular teacher at my secondary school who really kick-started my relationship with the full scope of political life. Peter Baker was my form tutor – young, and fiercely interested in the world outside our classroom.
He thought that we should be working to change the world, and that understanding economics was fundamental to understanding politics
He taught me a huge amount; I was enormously saddened to hear that he took his own life a decade after I’d left school, and I hope his family knows what a massive impact he had on the young people he taught.
That’s the incredible thing about being a teacher: speaking to pupils about the news, careers, politics, is just something you do as a matter of course – but at any moment, thanks to you, those young people might see, hear or read something that will open up a whole new view of their future; and they will probably always remember the moment that happens.
Every day, you are potentially changing lives, and that’s a powerful and exciting responsibility.
Author, award-winning journalist and former Labour MP Ed Balls returned this year to join on the judging panel for the Wicked Young Writer Awards 2018.
