Welcome back; and Sir Nick Gibb and Reforming Lessons
A book review! The first of, well, probably only one
Hello friends, subscribers, and people-who-clicked-subscribe-a-year-ago-and-then-forgot.
I’m resurrecting the Substack today – partly because I’ve passed across from the “oh my god, how can anyone write so often, how do you find the time or the topics” side of the aisle back to “I am bored with just doing financial reporting and people management, I miss writing” - and so I want to start being a bit more active again. And partly because I wanted to post a review of Rob Peal and Sir Nick Gibb’s book, published today.
Two disclosures. Firstly, I was one of a handful of people asked to review draft text during writing and give comments, as someone who played a very minor role in some of the reform journey over the last 15 years or so. This explains both how this review has come so quickly, and in case any of the specific quotes have been changed slightly since the review copy I read!
And secondly, I’m unapologetically a fan of much of what Nick did during his time in government - while recognising that on a whole bunch of issues, there were mistakes, missteps, or half complete changes. This should inform your reading of my review. But I’d argue that even if you think he was the worst thing ever to befall Sanctuary Buildings, the book is worth reading. Agree or disagree, it acts as a description of what he did and what he thinks. And that greater understanding of why politicians do stuff, I think, benefits everyone.
So thanks for not yet unsubscribing during my lengthy absence. And look forward to more pieces coming later this year (I’m going to try and mix it up and do some shorter pieces too, and I am also going to dragoon some of my incredibly talented Public First colleagues into writing here too, so keep an eye out for that!)
Reforming Lessons: Why English Schools Have Improved Since 2010 And How This Was Achieved
Partly biography, partly recent history, partly a blow by blow description of what happened, but above anything else a guide of how to make change happen, the book from Sir Nick Gibb (and his co-author Robert Peal) is written as a go-to -guide for school system improvement for any ambitious and reforming Minister around the world.
The book is structured around twelve key themes which mark Gibb’s study of education over the last 20 years (it starts with his appointment to the Education Select Committee in 2003). The chapters flip between an “internal” perspective, when exploring reforms that are carried out within the Department of Education, and an “external” perspective when Gibb discusses changes within the school system, and the growing impact of a wide range of non-governmental actors who influence him, and through him, wider policy.
The balance of the book reflects Gibb’s own priorities and preoccupations. Curriculum reform occupies a full three chapters, or one quarter, of the book – more than some of the higher profile reforms of Academies and Free Schools. Gibb is unapologetic about this. As he says, “ensuring the political process allows ministers to determine one of the most important levers in driving up standards, namely the curriculum, is an important precondition for success.”
And while he quotes Blair in identifying the false dichotomy between structures and standards, and is at pains to say how he supported the Gove led desire for structural reform, you can sense his real passions always lay elsewhere. “These early failures [of some MATs] demonstrated that autonomy did not automatically improve schools. It was what schools did with their autonomy that mattered. For me, this was the real power of academies: not autonomy, but emulation. Some academies used their autonomy well, some used it disastrously. But those academies that did use it well provided a model to inspire change in other schools.” And that change, almost always, was curricular.
Key allies and lieutenants in this curriculum journey get exhaustive mentions – Ruth Miskin appears frequently, as do ED Hirsch and Doug Lemov. By contrast, Justine Greening merits precisely two mentions (“A natural coalition builder”), and Nicky Morgan gets six (“a much more conciliatory figure than Michael Gove”). They at least do better than their own successors, who are brutally dispatched in one collective sentence: “Much of my work over that period was focused on safeguarding the reforms that we had already put in place, particularly through the turmoil of seven different Education Secretaries arriving at and leaving the Department from 2018 to 2024.”
Writing a checklist
Although not consciously structured as such, the real strength of the book lies in what one might summarise as a checklist for future reformers. Again and again Gibb returns to what he sees as his key lessons:
Focus not just on the structures of schools (though this matters) but what happens inside schools – most importantly curriculum but also teacher training, assessment, and how schools are inspected.
Never think there are some things which Ministers shouldn’t do. (There is an amazing anecdote in which Gibb summons every single civil servant responsible for various items of school guidance into a large room, where the guidance is laid out. As he describes, “I went through the spreadsheet [of guidance] line-by-line, so that the civil servant responsible for each item could justify its existence. If they could not do so adequately, the guidance was scrapped.” He then ponders, “Looking back, it was an exhausting day, and no doubt viewed by civil servants as a considerable absorber of their time. However, it sent an important message: staff time is a school’s most valuable resource, and a very high bar had to be set for any impositions made upon it.”)
Don’t underestimate the power of appointments (“your single most effective lever for bringing about change.”)
Concentrate on words, because in language you can see your agenda advancing or retreating.
Work with people outside government, where innovation is coming from.
Get rid of quangos and organisations where opponents may lurk, away from Ministerial oversight.
Don’t obsess with educational technology.
Make performance data open and easily comparable, right down to school level.
And – in his later, more reflective years as Schools Minister – “always assume good intentions; praise good practice more than criticise bad; find common ground; and never talk about ‘the Blob’”
Don’t get on his wrong side
At times, Gibb is waspish in his dismissal of people he considers not true allies. He recounts at length his vendetta against the QCA in Opposition: “I asked a series of Written Parliamentary questions of the QCA ….as a consequence, in April 2007, I was invited to a meeting at the QCA’s salubrious offices in Piccadilly with both the CEO, and its chairman, who told me in what I considered to be an aggressive tone to, in effect, stop wasting their time. I was furious that a public body had asked me not to hold them accountable to Parliament…. I ignored their request, and instead asked even more Parliamentary questions over the ensuing months.” He gently buries Nicky Morgan with the observation that, having focussed on the success of a school which he considers not suitable, and which subsequently achieves bad results, “I could not blame Nicky for struggling to see this danger: she had been transferred to Education from the Treasury with no notice, so never had the luxury of time I had enjoyed to read up on education philosophies. Her antennae did not naturally turn towards this danger, and mine had to instead.” And he makes the arch observation that when it came to independent schools and teacher assessed grades, “One cannot help but conclude that it was even harder for teachers to assess their own students’ attainment fairly when their parents were paying their salary.”
He swerves any verdict on Liz Truss’s time as Prime Minister, noting “During my two-year hiatus [from the Department], Liz Truss was appointed. When I moved back to the Department, she moved onto the Environment, so our time never overlapped. However, she did leave the promising legacy of a Maths Mastery programme.” Not, I suspect, a line that features towards the top of most people’s assessments of Liz Truss.
Lessons learned, and lessons ducked?
Indeed, if there is a criticism of the book, it is that this swerving of some of the difficult issues is a common theme. On grammar schools, Gibb merely narrates the decision made by Gove in Opposition to drop a commitment to creating more of them, and reflects on the difficulty that this caused David Willetts. Gibb notes he supports the move, but gives no more details. On Dominic Cummings, he likewise pronounces himself a supporter, but Cummings makes very few appearances in the book (other than a description of his office as like a teenager’s bedroom), and his overenthusiasm for briefing the media, causing subsequent problems for the government, make up the majority of those mentions. On Covid, and the debates about school closures, Gibb firmly says that this book is not the place to explore that. On the failure of some early Academies, he rather blithely says “I do not believe it was a coincidence that many politically lauded headteachers went on to lead scandal-beset trusts. Professional success is domain specific. For us to expect successful heads to be successful administrators of large Trusts with considerable budgets, without putting sufficient checks and regulations in place, was naïve.” On whether there is a tension between a narrative of autonomy, and the struct accountability requirements imposed by the Department, Gibb makes an impassioned (and convincing) defence of phonics as an exception, but sidesteps many other things which could equally be charged here.
But these are minor gripes with a book that fills a unique space in the literature and provides an incomparable level of detail as to one of the most important sets of education reforms around the world in recent years. The tone is quietly reflective, not triumphalist, even as Gibb clearly (and rightly) delights in the evidence vindicating him in the later years of his tenure. The chapters of the book replay an arc of the story of the political reformer – early innocent inquiry, growing frustration, the urgent preparation for taking office and the building of a plan, the initial flurry of activity, riding the wave of unforeseen blips in a journey (reshuffles, new Secretaries of State, global pandemics), and finally, a slowing of pace and the hope of “mellow fruitfulness” in later years – only to be interrupted by covid once more – and increasingly a focus on legacy building.
There is wistfulness in the end, too – when he reflects that in all the chaos between 2018 and 2024 “I did on occasion hope that I might be offered the top job, but my fate was to be always the bridesmaid, never the bride.”. But he rightly concludes that his role was to end by safeguarding the reforms that he put in place, along with his allies.
To the future
The book ends optimistically, with a view that the “self improving system” is finally here – that the performance of MATs shows that innovation can scale, and that the mechanisms are in place to sanction them should they fail. Whether he still thinks that in the light of the recent proposed Labour party legislation to shear Academies and Trusts of many of their freedoms, we don't know – though some of his interventions in the last few months since this book was first written suggests that he is no fan of the changes going through Parliament at present.
But what is crystal clear is that if a politician in any country wants to know how to make reform in education happen, there is a guide here – with mistakes as well as successes. And in England, too, there are lessons. There is much here that everyone from Becky Francis, to Oli De Botton, to Sir Martyn Oliver, to Bridget Phillipson, can reflect on. That, more than rising England PISA scores, will be Nick Gibb’s legacy.