Nick Gibb: the minister as expert

Sir Nick Gibb focused on education as an opposition MP from the early 2000s. From 2010-2023, with two brief interruptions, he was Minister for Schools. Nick's interest in specific aspects of teaching - notably phonics and knowledge-rich teaching - go back over twenty years. He spent his time in government pursuing lasting change in what and how English schools teach. With headteacher Robert Peal, Nick recently published Reforming Lessons: why English schools have improved since 2010 and how this was achieved, describing this work.With an array of possible topics, my main goal was to understand how Nick led the Department for Education, how he designed change, how he saw it unfold, and what he'd learned from the experience. Nonetheless, the result was a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation. We discussed:Why he first focused on education policy and how he set out to learn his brief and identify ways in which education could be improvedHow to make a government department work, the importance of working through legislation line by line, and why ministers are wrong to blame the Civil Service for their struggles to implement policy: "If you know what you want to do, I think you'll find that the British Civil Service want... to implement."The relative importance of standards and structures, and how his thinking changed over timeThe design of the phonics policy, and why it worked: "You have all these levers and then you start moving them and you realize they're actually either not connected to anything or they're made of rubber. You can't just pull one lever and say, permanent secretary please implement phonics. Because nothing will happen."Areas of concern, including recruitment and retention, the effect of the Ebacc on the arts, and why children's love of reading is falling.What he'd have done differently, and the advice he would give other countries trying to improve their education systems