‘We have lost the upward social mobility that we used to have’

School Days is a regular series by author Danny Danziger in which Britain’s most celebrated names and faces share the stories of their childhoods that shaped them. This week, ITV’s political broadcaster Robert Peston talks about his “incredible interest” in learning.

To the outside world we were a successful, happy family in the sense that there were no visible signs of dysfunction. But I was a very anxious child from about age 12, with quite severe obsessive-compulsive disorders.

I would do things like get up at 1am to check the gas was off and all the doors were locked, go back to bed, convince myself I hadn’t checked it properly, and get up again. This was a ritual that took several hours, and as a result I didn’t get much sleep, so it was exhausting. And strangely enough, because they were busy, my parents never noticed or talked to me about it. I just had to do it.

My father came from a fairly classical, not-much-money East End background; his father was a pleater, pleating women’s skirts. Dad went to a public school called Hackney Downs, or the Grocers’ Company’s School as it was called because it was founded by the Worshipful Company of Grocers. He did brilliantly there, top of the class in everything, then went to the LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science) and then Princeton (University).

It was a time of remarkable upward social mobility – of a kind we have lost, I would argue – but as a result he believed passionately in state education, as did my mother. They also believed that selection at 11 was far too early and that it was damaging to be considered academically bright or written off at that age, and they became leading campaigners for comprehensive education.

So there was no question that I would go to a local secondary school, and so I did: it was a school called Highgate Wood, which was really local because I could walk across a number of playing fields from my house to get there.