Man behind top-up fees 'is more Andrew than Adonis'

The appointment of Andrew Adonis was always going to rile traditional Labour supporters. As Downing Street's education policy adviser, he had a heavy influence over some of the Government's most controversial initiatives. His role in pushing through university top-up fees will be viewed with particular disdain by the Left-wing.

An unrepentant Blairite moderniser, Mr Adonis, 42, is a one-time Social Democrat Party activist and the son of a Greek Cypriot postman and trade unionist. He was educated at Kingham Hill School, Oxfordshire, and Keble College and Christ Church, Oxford.

He has been an academic - he was a Nuffield fellow and a journalist at the Financial Times, before joining the No 10 policy unit in 1998, becoming its head in 2001 before stepping down two years later to concentrate on education.

He championed the term "excellence" in education - an aspiration repeatedly highlighted in the five-year plan for education. But his commitment to university top-up fees and initiatives such as city academies, and the transfer of some powers over schools from local authorities to parents, have been fiercely criticised by the Labour Left. It is rumoured that he played a key role in the resignation of Estelle Morris from her post as Education Secretary. They did not see eye-to-eye on many issues and she finally went, saying she was not up to the job.

His critics argue that until now, he has wielded too much backroom power, without any accountability, and accuse him of having no relationship with the teaching profession. Professional politicians are likely to raise eyebrows over whether a policy buff will have the nous to handle such a heavily political brief. He has never been tested in the cut-throat world of parliamentary politics.

His supporters say he is superbly qualified for the job having spent years working at the cutting edge of education policy. Mr Blair believes that his transformation from the role of government adviser to that of minister will strengthen the Department for Education and help hammer home the message that improving schools is a top priority.

His publications include A Conservative Revolution?: The Thatcher-Reagan decade in perspective; Failure in British Government: the politics of the poll tax; and The Myth of Britain's classless society.

The crueller of his critics say he does not live up to his name, saying he's "more Andrew than Adonis". But supporters say he is not as dogmatic as his clearly expressed views on education issues suggest.

One said: "Andrew's very open to a good argument. He's full of ideas, some of them are potty, but you can argue them out of him."

Two years ago, it was reported that he considered choosing a German-speaking school, with fees of up to £3,500 a year, for his children. However, No 10 denied that he had accepted a place at the Deutsche Schule in Richmond.

Such a flirtation with a feepaying school flies in the face of his fundamental opposition to selective schooling. In the past, he has attacked "educational apartheid" which he blames for creating a "segregated society".

He has also hit out at universities, as recently as 1998 branding them "largely a finishing school for children with an expensive private education".

Writing about Oxford in the Observer at that time, he said: "Until the deep structural and class divisions which dominate our schools and universities are tackled, the great divide in English education will remain as wide as ever."