'I worked my way up from dinner lady to headteacher': inspiring career stories

Steve Rotheram, the Labour member of parliament for Liverpool Walton, still talks about his job with an air of disbelief. "I had never been in the House of Commons until I walked in there as an MP. I thought having such a job was impossible."

Rotheram's story is an increasingly unusual one. He left school in Kirkby, just outside Liverpool, with few formal qualifications. "All I ever wanted was to be in the building industry," he admits. In 1981 he enrolled on an apprenticeship with Fairclough Builders and over the next decade plied his trade as a bricklayer, travelling around, looking for work. "God bless Mrs Thatcher," he adds, "and the severe recession".

Rotheram traces his political career back to 1992 and a chance meeting with Peter Kilfoyle, then the Labour MP for Liverpool Walton. "I was asking him about a falling down nursery that my lad went to," Rotheram says. "It started there."

Over the years that followed, Kilfoyle remained a source of encouragement. As Kilfoyle took a post in the Cabinet Office after the Labour election victory in 1997, Rotheram began to involve himself in local politics back in Liverpool. In 2002, he was elected to the city council and by 2008 – when Liverpool was the European Capital of Culture – he had risen to be Lord Mayor. Two years later he replaced his old friend Kilfoyle who stood down at the 2010 general election, winning a majority of 19,818, one of the largest in the country.

"It's about taking the chances when they come your way," says Rotheram. "Everyone in this place [the Commons], no matter what their background, will have been given the chance to prove themselves at some point. They've taken that opportunity."

That said, Rotheram is concerned that his route to Westminster is becoming an increasingly rare one. A recent study into the backgrounds of 2015 parliamentary candidates found that a third of those standing in winnable seats were privately educated. Rotheram himself checked with the House of Commons Library and found that just 25 MPs of the 2010 intake came from traditional working class backgrounds.

"I've no problem with career politicians, barristers, Eton or Oxford and Cambridge or any of that," he says. "But there has to be a balance. If not parliament becomes less relevant."

Kerry Hudson, the Scottish novelist, also comes from a working class family. She was raised in a succession of council estates and B&Bs for the homeless, and has worked a succession of jobs. "I was a waitress, a barmaid, an ear-piercer, a Harrods Christmas elf, a fundraiser and a call centre operative," she says.

Inspired by her early experiences, Hudson eventually settled into a career as a project manager for a children's charity. After some years she took a six-month sabbatical, travelled to Vietnam and spent time writing. Then, in quick succession, she won a short story prize and was signed by a literary agent. Her novel Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma was published in 2012 and was shortlisted for the Southbank Sky Arts Literature Award, the Guardian First Book Prize and the Scottish First Book of the Year.

Hudson puts her success down to hard work, making sacrifices, being brave and taking chances. And, like Rotheram, she feels that more needs to be done to encourage people of all classes, and to tackle what she terms the poverty of aspiration. "There needs to be hope and role models to show that there's reward at the end of a long road," she says.

Hudson considers herself lucky that she did have a role model – "a mum who taught me to dream big" – something she believes is a vital ingredient in career success.

Ruth Scharvona, the head of branch at John Lewis in Stratford, agrees. Scharvona started a job on the shop floor at Peter Jones, part of the John Lewis group, in Sloane Square in 1988, directly after her A-levels. Over the next seven years she says she grew up there, becoming a section manager then a department manager. Throughout the early 2000s, Scharvona continued upwards through the ranks. In 2011 she joined the new John Lewis Stratford store as general manager and then, in 2013, was appointed to the top post as head of branch in Stratford.

"I didn't think I'd ever get to this level," Scharvona says. "When you're 18, the first level of management is your desire and I thought it might take 15 years to get to the second tier of management. But that would be it."

But like Hudson and Rotheram, Scharvona was blessed with supportive co-workers who showed her how to motivate a team and also give a real structure to the things that she wanted to achieve. She adds: "Would I be in this position without these people? No, I wouldn't be."

But is progression to management from the shop floor becoming more difficult? Just as career politicians in Westminster are crowding out working class MPs, are graduate schemes stifling the kind of career development that Scharvona has experienced?

Scharvona doesn't think so. While the John Lewis graduate scheme remains a typical path into management, she points out that it is only one way that people can get promoted. At Stratford she currently has four 16-year-old apprentices. Four others qualified in 2014, two of them have already progressed into management positions and she is hopeful that they can climb right to the top of the ladder if they apply themselves. She marks out four qualities which successful employees share: hard work, understanding your worth, ability and the humility to learn.

Rebecca Clarke, the headteacher of Greenleas primary school in Leighton Buzzard, shares this view. Eight years ago she joined the school's staff as a parent helper and then spent a brief stint as a dinner lady before getting her first classroom role. Earlier this month she created national headlines when she was appointed headteacher, crowning a remarkable rise. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think this would happen in such a short space of time," she says.

For Clarke the toughest point in her career was completing her initial training year. "You're always working and studying, trying to balance the workload," she says. "You have pressure points in the academic year and they can seem very overwhelming. These moments were difficult, but once you get to the other side it's not so daunting the next time around."

Clarke says she was sustained during these years by her love of children. And like so many others Clarke benefited from an encouraging colleague. In her case, the school's old head. "She was instrumental in starting me off. She saw potential in me before I saw it in myself," adds Clarke.

Unlocking potential like Clarke's and offering others a helping hand have become important to those who have achieved. Both Kerry Hudson and Steve Rotheram in London have felt inspired to establish schemes to help others progress in their careers. Hudson has founded the popular WoMentoring Project to help talented women get a foothold in the publishing industry, while in Westminster Rotheram is planning to advertise a paid internship for someone from his constituency as soon as the election is out of the way.

"I feel that I have a responsibility to do that. It's like supporting a football club. You always want to see someone from your own town do well," Rotheram says. "I want to see if we can provide opportunity for people from Walton to come and experience Westminster for themselves."

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