Nick Gibb: ‘We had to blow up the concrete’

Nick Gibb prods the leftover crumbs of farm-shop cheese, bought locally in his Bognor Regis and Littlehampton constituency, with his index finger.

You seem to like the detail of policy and not the attention of politics, I say. 

Prod, prod, prod goes his finger. 

Would you be happier squirrelled away in a back office, just writing the policy, not being the frontman?

The finger pauses, but he doesn’t look up from the small white plate. 

“I would worry that someone else wouldn’t do it properly, because they didn’t understand it properly. And if you don’t understand it, you can’t articulate it as well.” 

The finger begins again. Prod, prod, prod. 

So you’d rather lose the argument yourself than trust someone else to do it, I ask. 

The finger stops. This time he looks up. 

“Oh, I don’t think I would lose it,” he replies. And he smiles, briefly, before dropping his gaze again to his plate to prod once more at his carefully corralled crumbs of cheese.   

Gibb, schools minister for the majority of the past 12 years, is at war. He sees himself as the protector of children from the scourge of “progressivism”. He believes he is on the cusp of victory. 

But, despite the bravado, he is anxious that without him around, things will start to slip; that the fight will be lost for the ideas that he feels so strongly will change lives. The two short periods since coming into government during which he was not schools minister seem to have convinced him how real that danger is. 

He appears certain, now, that few politicians know as much about education as he does.

And when you look back on his time in government, at what his closest colleagues say about him and at what he might do next, this certainty in his uniqueness explains a lot. 

That Gibb cares deeply about education is something even his fiercest critics - at least those who have actually met him - don’t doubt. Those he has clashed with and those who have often been cruel about him personally still concede that he is driven by a deep concern for education above all else.

This developed from a number of experiences in schools that he found upsetting. 

Many were from his own education. He attended seven different schools - the family moved frequently owing to his father’s work as an engineer - and they were a mix of state, independent and grammar schools (including one Canadian state school at which he spent two years).

“I went to school from 1965 to 1978. If you think about those dates, that’s when Labour got in, and all the reforms came in with abolishing grammar schools and mixed-ability teaching and all this stuff,” he explains. “I was there; I could see the decline happening. And so I was influenced by that.”

He talks about personally achieving half of his sixth-form college cohort’s eight A grades at A level not because he was brighter than everyone else, but because the other students had been so badly “let down”.

It was these memories he revisited when, on his third attempt at winning a seat, he became MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton in 1997 - one of the few Tory MPs to make it into the Labour-dominated Commons. He says that, when he visited schools, he felt children were still being let down. And they were being let down most of all, he felt, by schools’ failure to teach them to read. 

“One of the secondary schools said something like 40 per cent of the kids coming into the school in Year 7 had a reading age below their chronological age. And another hideous percentage, like a quarter, had a reading age two years below their chronological age. I had never heard of anybody having a reading age below their chronological age. And there were so many.

“So, I started asking the primary schools how often they heard their children read. I assumed every day, as my mother [who was a primary teacher] had her children read every day - she had 40 in a class. And they said, ‘Oh, once a week.’ I thought, ‘How on Earth can they read if they only do so once a week?’”

He tells detailed stories of individual children’s experiences that he was exposed to during this period. He finds each example upsetting, even years later. 

“People just blamed the kids. They said, ‘Oh, these kids are from this council estate. They’re from this area. That’s why they can’t read, the parents don’t have books at home, the parents don’t take them to the library.’ They didn’t think to look to themselves, you know, [and ask,] ‘Are we doing this right?’”

Education is clearly emotional for Gibb. However, he is also a man who doesn’t like loose ends. He spent 13 years at financial firm KPMG before becoming a politician and he has an accountant’s desire for order. Many aspects of schooling seem puzzling or irrational to him. He frequently quotes data to demonstrate how things don’t add up.

So, while there is definitely a social justice reason behind his investment in education, there’s a strong element of his simply needing to see the world make sense, too. 

That Gibb matches his care for education with detailed knowledge about it is also acknowledged by his critics and peers alike (although for the former group this comes with some heavy caveats, which we will come to shortly). According to multiple civil servants, he is probably the most knowledgeable minister the Department for Education has ever seen.

“He’s incredibly unusual,” explains one civil servant who worked in the DfE for several years. “You just don’t see that level of detail in other ministers. He’s the most detail-orientated minister I’ve ever worked with.”

His process of gaining knowledge starts with a complete commitment to reading his briefings and other materials that come his way (he “loves” this part of the job, he says, but is less keen on doing the research himself). Civil servants say his attention to these briefings is unusual among ministers.  

A second route to knowledge acquisition is his group of what he calls “experts”, who he believes can give him the “evidence” for what works. 

“I have a large group of people I talk to. I like experts in their field,” Gibb explains. “Debbie Morgan on maths, Tim Oates on curriculum, Tom Bennett on behaviour, Ian Baukham on languages.”

On literacy, it’s clear that Ruth Miskin, founder of Read Write Inc, is a huge influence. It was she who taught him about phonics even before he was an opposition minister, and it is her he has turned to frequently since. She comes up in conversation frequently, more than anyone else. 

And then there is ED Hirsch, the US academic widely cited as providing the theoretical basis of the knowledge-rich curricula movement. In an essay for Policy Exchange in 2015, Gibb wrote that “no single writer has influenced my thinking on education more than ED Hirsch”. 

He now describes Hirsch’s book The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them as like a “Rosetta stone” that showed “knowledge being absolutely key and how this had been downgraded through progressive ideology”. 

There is no doubt that the members of this group have given Gibb an incredibly detailed view of their respective topics, but many from both inside and outside government question whether that translates to a knowledge of education that is balanced or representative of the evidence available.

There are accusations that Gibb is too narrow in his views, that he seeks only the evidence that complies with his ideological standpoint, that he is not open to challenge.  

“He has his pet passions and on those he won’t be moved,” says a sector leader who has worked with Gibb frequently in the past 10 years. “He only believes what his small group tell him.”

‘I probably upset some people on school visits, but I just wanted to understand: why are you doing it this way?’

A current DfE colleague disputes this narrative. “When people say he is ideological and has a small circle of influence, they are really just saying they disagree with him,” they argue. 

When the criticism is put to him, Gibb argues his view is far from narrow.  

“I am in favour of things that work,” he responds. “If someone comes along and says phonics is great but there is this other thing, X, and it works better than phonics, then I will go on that course and see the evidence.”

But should he not be out looking for that challenge? Is he actively seeking views beyond his small group? Who does he speak to that genuinely opposes him?

He struggles to answer. Then, eventually: “Chris Paterson [former senior policy adviser to the education secretary and now the EEF’s director of impact] and Rory Gribbell [currently special adviser to the education secretary]. I trust them both because I know that, despite any disagreements we may have, we have the same underlying philosophy. They both can persuade me.”

And what about those of a different underlying philosophy? 

He never quite answers the question. 

Gibb’s other main source of knowledge has been school visits. He’s now completed around 1,000 of them. 

“I wanted to get a real understanding of what was causing poor standards in too many schools and that’s what I tried to do on the school visits,” he explains. “I would be asking challenging questions - probably too challenging sometimes for someone who is a visitor. I probably upset some people, but I just wanted to understand: why are you doing it this way? Why are children grouped like this? How are you teaching reading?”

Many of these visits did indeed upset people. Heads talk about a “bizarre quizzing of pupils”, of Gibb being openly critical of practice. 

He says he is sorry if he upset anyone. He has learned not to do it now, he says, but he still thinks it was necessary. 

“Had I not asked those things, really probing, I wouldn’t have learned what I learned,” he explains. “Asking those questions, though, could be seen as impertinent, and I don’t do it now because of that, but if I had not asked those questions I would not have gained the understanding of the education system that I have.”

And what is that understanding?  

“I came to realise that the more a school was progressive, the [greater] degree to which the school would be underperforming,” he says. “I could usually tell from the first conversation I would have with the headteacher what the results were going to be, and I was generally right.”

So, do care and (perhaps selective) knowledge a good schools minister make?

Well, Gibb has held the position longer than anyone else. He did it from 2005 to 2010 in opposition; in government, he did it between 2010 and 2012 and from 2014 to 2021 before coming back again in October this year. He’s clearly well thought of by those within his party, therefore, and deemed by them to do the role well. 

He’s got on with some education secretaries better than others. He has special praise for Michael Gove, and some kind words for David Cameron, who held the role briefly in 2005. 

“He’s had rows with secretaries of state who didn’t understand him,” reveals a DfE stalwart. “Gove managed him very well; he indulged Gibb in areas where he could have impact and rowed him back if he went too far.”

The consensus from those who have worked with him as schools minister - both inside and outside the DfE - is that he is committed, and that he enjoys debate. He’s well liked; most describe him as courteous, sensitive and approachable. But there is also agreement that he can be incredibly stubborn, pernickety and obsessional. 

On the last point, a more specific accusation is that he demands 100 per cent success in everything he does and is therefore unrealistic and prone to hammering at a nail that has already been hammered enough. 

“He often pushes too far and expects too much,” says one ex-colleague. “He’s often won the war but still wants to fight every single battle until every pocket of resistance is gone.”

According to Estelle Morris, who was schools minister and then education secretary under Labour between 1997 and 2002 (and was previously a teacher), this mindset is ineffective in the messy world of education.

“There has got to be give and take as a politician,” she says. “If you push too hard to the purest goal, you give too many people too many reasons not to do it. Politicians can be guilty of believing there is a straight path to something. The reality is that the path is winding, and you need to trek that path to get where you want to be. You can’t take any shortcuts.” 

‘I do accept that sometimes you need to compromise…I have probably become more pragmatic since 2010’

Gibb recognises the criticism of his “obsessional” style. But he believes he has changed on this point. 

“I do accept that sometimes you need to compromise,” he concedes. “I am a compromiser in terms of the practical realities of getting things adopted, no question about that, and I have probably become more pragmatic than I was in 2010 when there was a real rush to get things done.”

He speaks of his time as a trustee of the David Ross Education Trust when he was “out” between 2012 and 2014 (having been removed as schools minister) as being instrumental to that change.

“I started to see education from the perspective of the school. I was an employer now of teachers, so I learned a little bit more about how to manage teachers,” he says. 

Another theme that comes up frequently is that he has less interest in education at a system level.  

“He starts at the individual level and works his way up to the system level,” says someone who worked very closely with him during his first years in office. “This means it is usually more effective policy, but the levers he reaches for are sometimes not the right ones.”

A senior union official concurs, suggesting that Gibb does not always understand the impact of the lever he chooses - be it statutory assessments such as the phonics screening check or “softer” power such as the behaviour hubs. 

“We have seen a narrowing of the curriculum and a production-line approach in schools because he has focused the mind too far on the measures of controlling education, not the education itself,” they say. 

Gibb says that his view has changed on structures. He admits that, originally, Gove was more focused on the structural side and he on the standards. But he came to see how intimately the two things were connected.  

“My position changed in that period [of 2010 to 2012],” he says. “I always thought, ‘Structures, well, fine - but it’s [standards] we have to sort out.’ Then I realised that if you have schools under the control of local authorities, and they are not permitted or advised to teach phonics or multiplication tables, then it is very difficult for my agenda to be successful. So, the academies movement was crucial in liberating the profession from that control.”

As for the levers he reaches for, he does not accept that they have led to a narrowing of curriculum, that his aim for a broad and balanced curriculum is being hampered by the methods he is using to assess his success in achieving it. 

“I’m always surprised and disappointed when I hear schools, certainly some primary schools, saying, ‘We are just focusing on English and maths in Year 5 and 6 because that is what we are being tested on,’” he says. “That is not my objective, it is not government policy. And, actually, it will hinder getting good results in English and maths. It is a mistake to have a reductionist approach to education.”

Gibb’s time as schools minister has not made him popular with many teachers. He has more supporters among the profession than you might think, but he does attract a huge amount of criticism. For the most part, this is about what he has done, not about who he is.

“He is so intensely private that the perception of what he is like has become a projection of what people think someone who advocates the sort of policies he has pushed must be like,” says someone who has worked with him for much of his political life. “As such, he has become the embodiment of his policies in the public mindset more than most other politicians.”

Apart from going public with his relationship with - and then marriage to - his long-term partner Michael Simmonds in 2015, Gibb has indeed kept himself in the background. He isn’t on speed dial to the national press, he doesn’t seek out the media rounds, he rarely speaks on political matters outside his role; he is, as one ex-colleague puts it, “politically safe and doesn’t want to offend”. 

Gibb says this has been a conscious choice.   

“I came into politics because of ideas, not because I want to sell books or go on I’m a Celebrity,” he says. “This feeds into the point that no one knows much about me - it’s because I’m not really interested in being famous.”

Yet, edu-famous he is. And the ideas that got him there - that fed all the policy that has caused so many personal attacks - have their root in a single, simple idea: a deep, ideological opposition to what he calls “progressivism”. 

His characterisation of progressivism is that it pushes a child-led philosophy of teaching, that it prioritises generic skills over knowledge, that it enforces group and project work, that it removes the teacher from being at the centre of learning. None of this is evidence based, he suggests. 

What does have evidence is a teacher-led, knowledge-first, direct instruction-dominated philosophy of teaching, he claims. And it is a belief in these approaches that underpins all his policy while in post: phonics, maths mastery, a complete rewiring of the curriculum, a recalibration of ITT and so on. 

“The evidence says these methods are more effective than other methods,” he insists.

‘I came into politics because of ideas, not because I want to sell books or go on I’m a Celebrity’

But the evidence is actually incredibly nuanced. Also, what comes out on top often comes down to what you are trying to measure. Is he sure that what he is measuring is the right thing for the pupils, for their communities, for their future prospects as adults?

“We have to probe these arguments and discuss it,” he answers simply. “I like pluralism.”

Does he really think the progressive-traditional divide is as binary as he sometimes infers? 

“There is obviously a spectrum,” he admits. But he then reiterates that any progressive elements in a teacher’s practice have no evidence. 

And does he think his preferred methods deprofessionalise the teacher by making them a delivery mechanism, not a reactive being, as some have claimed?

On the contrary, he says: traditional methods are putting the professionalism back into the profession. It is about valuing the teacher’s expertise, about putting their focus on what matters: whether the child is actually learning.

It is argued by some that he tried to force this interpretation on the profession, rather than try to persuade them of its worth. In addition, some claim his impatience for change meant he moved too fast. 

His answer is that he had no choice but to move fast, to force rather than cajole, to destroy what was there so he could rebuild. Labour was “in thrall to progressivism”, he says - all the decision-making roles, all the power, all the research was dependent on a progressive ideology.  

“In 2010, we had to blow up the concrete,” he says. “Because progressive education was so bedded in from the 1960s and 1970s, so cemented in, first we had to blow up the concrete to allow teachers to have these [opposing] views.”

Morris does not agree with Gibb’s characterisation of Labour’s philosophy of education over the 1997-2010 period. And she has a strikingly different theory of change from Gibb’s, too. 

“We were not in thrall to progressivism - we were meeting teachers where they were and trying to change that in a way that brought them with us,” she says. “You need to get the teacher education right, help them buy into the changes, get them on the bus, as it were. And then those changes happen because the teachers genuinely believe in it and see the value in it.”

That education has undergone a significant transformation while Nick Gibb has been schools minister is undeniable. That he drove much - if not the majority - of that process is agreed by most who would know. So, it’s curious that he says he is against acts of radical change.

“One reason I became a Conservative was hostility to any sort of revolution,” he says. “I was appalled by what happened in 1968 [there were widespread student protests]. I was appalled by learning about the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution.”

He seems to see his tenure as being focused on restoration, not rebellion - despite the language he uses being more fitting for the latter. And there are those who believe his legacy will be aligned with that; among certain groups, he is credited with a return to rigour, standards and a “proper” education. 

“He’s impressive because he cares about real stuff that matters and has the courage of his convictions, and this transcends politics,” says one trust leader. 

Amy Forrester, a director of behaviour in a secondary school in Cumbria, who has never voted Conservative but is hugely supportive of the reforms of the past 12 years, adds: “Millions of children now attend safe, secure schools and learn far more than they did before Gibb’s time in office. I firmly believe his tenure at the DfE is one of the most impressive we have seen in education.”

Others see it differently. Former Labour MP and one-time education secretary Charles Clarke articulates what many others hint at: “There is no doubt that he is a hardworking and committed minister,” says Clarke, “but he is mentally trapped in a 1950s grammar school dystopia.”

Some argue that Gibb has overreached in terms of government influence, that he has been too prescriptive, too divisive - and that the profession has suffered as a consequence. 

“‘He divides education like no other’ is the most positive way I can describe him, but he’s had 10-plus years already and we’ve gone backwards,” was how one headteacher greeted Gibb’s reappointment this year. 

So, what does Gibb believe his legacy to be? He’s not ready to talk about that. He hasn’t come back to the DfE to make up the numbers. He’s got more to do. And his motivation remains the same: he wants to take the profession to a point at which progressivism will never be able to sneak back in. 

“I am optimistic about that,” he says. “These [more traditional] ideas have taken off in this country. We will reach a tipping point where these ideas have won. Teachers have been liberated and people can see that it is working.”

This time around, though, there appears to be a change in his approach to ensure his victory. You sense a recognition that, while he may not be able to get others to know or care as much as him, he at least needs them to understand what is “right”. 

“If you talk to most Tory MPs, they will say that the Gove-Gibb reforms are probably one of the most successful elements of our period in office. But what they don’t know - and this is what I learned when I was out of this recently - is what we did,” he says. “They couldn’t tell you there is a multiplication check; they probably don’t know there is a phonics check. They certainly couldn’t tell you about the knowledge-rich curriculum. Or even really what the academies programme is. 

“That’s my fault. And so I am determined, now I am back, to just do more to explain what we’ve done and why.”

This will require Gibb to become uncomfortable. Despite his reputation for being combative, he is a quiet, amiable, shy man. To get his ideas across, he will need to win people over by being louder and more aggressive.

But even if he does win them over, will he really trust them to get it - the ideas and the cost of not implementing them, which he feels so acutely?

He’s clearly conflicted on that point.

Part of him is confident. “I think the ideas are so strong that it doesn’t matter if they are attached to the ‘Gibb’ name,” he says. 

But another part of him is clearly still not sure that the ideas can survive without him, nor that others can protect them as well as he can. 

“I like to be involved,” he admits, “because I don’t want the ideas to fall off the track.” 

For the time being, it’s clearly the voice of uncertainty that is dominating. And with an election likely to be just two years away, and a Labour government odds-on to win with a very different, more progressive education agenda, this will make what Nick Gibb does next very interesting indeed.

Jon Severs is editor at Tes