Jacqui Smith was born in Malvern, Worcestershire. She attended Dyson Perrins High School in Malvern. Her parents were teachers, and both Labour councillors, although her mother briefly joined the SDP. Her local MP, Conservative backbencher Michael Spicer, recalled in Parliament in 2003 how he had first met her when he addressed the sixth form at The Chase School, where her mother was a teacher; he joked: "So great was my eloquence that she immediately rushed off and joined the Labour Party." Smith read PPE at Hertford College, Oxford, and gained a PGCE from Worcester College of Higher Education.