Book Review: Tim Clark on Sir Nick Gibb’s Reforming Lessons

Tim Clark

Nick Gibb graduated in law and worked for KPMG as a chartered accountant before entering Parliament in 1997. Despite not having ever worked as a teacher, he has had a long parliamentary connection with education: he was appointed Shadow Schools Minister in 2005, was Schools Minister from 2010 to 2012, from 2014 to 2021 and again from 2022 to 2023. He was knighted in the 2025 New Year’s Honours List.

The book is detailed and, in places, persuasive, and I have a great deal of sympathy with both his aims and with some of his arguments, but I am afraid that there are three specific aspects with which I take serious issue.

Standards

The whole premise of the book is that between 2010 and 2014, educational standards have significantly improved in England as a direct result of Conservative educational policy. Evidence to support this premise largely comes from England’s improved ranking in the latest international comparative PISA and PIRLS tests. Immediately, extreme caution is required.

The DfE’s own official analysis of the latest PISA tests [conducted by the University of Oxford] openly admits that the sample of pupils used in England for the tests was academically brighter than the national average, meaning that any attempt to compare England’s inflated results with those of other countries is almost worthless. “Caution is required when interpreting the analysis”. “Particular caution should be taken when considering the ‘rank order’ of countries.” [P20] Despite this skewed, academically brighter sample, however, some of the performance data is shocking: in science, for example, England’s actual results have dropped, with one exception, every year of Conservative administration. [A score of 515 in 2009; 516 in 2012; 512 in 2015; 507 in 2018 and 503 in 2022, p70] although our international ranking in science has improved. The focus on “ranking” is also telling: there is little correlation between comparative ranking and real terms performance. In maths for example, our ranking has improved over time, but our actual performance was higher in 2006.

We now live in a country where less than one half of 10-year-olds feel confident in reading (it used to be more than half) – the very key to accessing the rest of the curriculum – and less than a third now actually like reading. (The latter has nothing to do with social media or modern communications: enjoyment of reading is much higher in similar OECD countries. If damage to the love of reading is a direct result of government reading policy, then this truly is scandalous.) In the same year that the latest PIRLS results were published, the National Literacy Trust pointed out that 29% of 11-year-olds left primary school without the writing skills expected for their age and 34% of 16-year-olds did not achieve a grade 4 or above in GCSE English and maths. The growing attainment gap is also worrying. The gap in maths between England’s highest and lowest achieving pupils was significantly above the OECD average [p26] and, “Since 2012, there has been a widening in the distribution of reading scores in England” [p57]. And what of non-academic performance – are we producing healthy, resilient, ambitious, hardworking and law-abiding young adults? Almost one in three pupils leave primary school at least overweight, if not clinically obese, and almost one in five pupils is still “persistently absent” [truant]; exclusions and suspensions, especially for persistent disruptive behaviour and violence, remain at an all-time high. Recent DfE figures suggest that behaviour is poor in 20% of schools and very poor in 7% (pre-COVID figures were 4% and 1% respectively).

Although I am definitely not arguing that there have been no improvements in school performance, the picture is definitely not one of dramatic, universal and system wide improvement.

A misunderstanding of a great teacher and a great lesson.

On page 6, Gibb states that, “The only way to improve schools in England was to improve the quality of teaching in classrooms.” I could not agree more – it is great classroom teachers who change lives and who hold the key to a genuine improvement in standards, hence the critical importance of the point below. But what makes a great teacher and a great lesson? Gibb’s support for phonics is well known and the sub-heading on page 92 states, “Phonics First, Fast and Only”.  What a ridiculous statement. No teacher, at least no good teacher, would ever suggest only ever using one teaching strategy. There is no doubt that phonics is deemed by most teachers to be effective, especially for weak and middle ability children, but it has its drawbacks: it can be seen as dry and boring and, for the most able and precocious readers, it is sometimes seen as too rigid and restrictive, even holding proficient readers back. (It should also be added that phonics is primarily about the decoding of words, it has little to do with the fluency of reading and nothing at all to do with comprehension. This may help account for the decline in children’s confidence and interest in reading.)

Many years ago, I asked an experienced primary Head whether she supported the use of phonics. Her response: “I nearly always use phonics but, sometimes, depending on the topic or the children, I use whole word look and say and, sometimes, I do a handstand on the desk.” The point she was making was that the great teacher utilises whichever methodology enables those particular pupils, in that particular lesson, on that particular day, to succeed. (The age, ability range, topic and weather, will all play a part.)  Successful teaching takes experience, training, knowledge and skill. Which illustrates the better teacher: using a particular teaching strategy “first, fast and only” or utilising the strategy which works best with a specific group of children?

Similarly, on page 78 Gibb tells us that he developed, “something of a stock lesson that I would wheel out whilst visiting primary schools”. He openly admits his “lesson” was just a series of factual questions. I fully support a knowledge-based curriculum, but quizzing children is not teaching; it may be a starting point, a benchmark to inform your teaching, but this very simple anecdote is very revealing. What did he do with the children who got the answers wrong? With those who got them right? With those who failed to take part? How did he enable all children, regardless of ability, to progress? How did he measure that progress? How did he get the children to use the knowledge he gave them? This is what teachers do every lesson, every day – they don’t hold a pub-type quiz and then walk away. Is it surprising that the third biggest reason for teachers resigning in droves is, “Not being valued by policy makers like the government”? The sixth biggest reason is, “Government initiatives or policy changes”. (“Dissatisfaction with pay” ranks at number ten.)

Teacher recruitment and retention

“Teacher recruitment gave me many sleepless nights whilst in post”, writes Gibb on page 213. Be that as it may, it is just a pity he did not make this his top priority as the shortage of teachers is now the single biggest issue facing our school system.  Last academic year, over 40,000 teachers quit for reasons other than retirement (over 9% of the workforce) while, at the same time, only 50% of teacher training places were filled (only 16% in business studies, 17% in physics, 27% in DT, 36% in computing) and only 57% the previous year. The latest PISA Report comments that, “A lack of teaching staff was reported to be the most common barrier to teaching both in England and across the OECD (54% of [English] pupils attended schools where the headteachers reported this hindered instruction “to some extent” or “a lot”, compared to 47% across the OECD).” [p13] The current government’s promise to create 6,500 new teachers (but without saying how or from where) is simply a drop in the ocean. The previous government claimed that the number of teachers had increased (failing to mention that the number of pupils had also risen) but this was only possible by increasing the number of unqualified and of overseas trained teachers. The latter is not necessarily negative but, of course, it depends on where and how those teachers were trained. The aim must not be simply to have enough bodies to stand in front of classes – we need highly trained, effective and dedicated classroom professionals. [As the number of children in primary schools is falling, overtime, fewer teachers will be required, but for the next few years, teacher shortages will continue to damage the classroom experience of many.]

The single biggest issue driving teachers out of the profession is workload. What is criminal is that this is nothing new – the crisis has been growing for the past twenty years but no government, Conservative or Labour, has resolved it. In 2006 the Telegraph ran a headline, “500,000 children without a headteacher”. The reason: workload. Gibb writes that “I agreed with Nicky’s [Morgan} concern with workload” [P165] when she launched the Workload Challenge in 2014 to help identify unnecessary workload. That was eleven years ago and still, little has changed. Further research in 2018 by the DfE into the recruitment and retention crisis also concluded that workload was the biggest contributory factor (although adding that resignations often stemmed from a combination of reasons). Despite all this, the latest annual survey of teachers’ attitudes still lists the main reasons for quitting as high workload, followed closely by stress/poor wellbeing. No school system can be better than its teachers; sadly, in this respect, all recent governments have completely failed to provide the answer: the requisite number of well trained and effective classroom teachers.

Conclusion

I have a great deal of respect for Gibb, not least for his genuine passion for improving schools and the life chances of young people. Like many evangelists with the zealousness of a convert, however, he is, at times, blinkered; he has also been surrounded by like-minded people who very often have had little experience of regularly standing in front of thirty difficult teenagers on a wet Friday afternoon. The result is that his narrow approach fails to really grasp the true purpose of education or to understand the art of teaching. Gibb argues that the educational zeitgeist has changed during the fourteen years of Conservative administration to one that is now, “led by evidence”. [P235] All the evidence is certainly there: the way to improve our schools is to have a good supply of highly trained, highly motivated and highly effective classroom teachers plus an environment in which teachers can flourish. Our mantra must be “to empower teachers to teach and pupils to learn” – strong discipline, strong leadership and a curriculum fit for all. I am sure that Gibb would actually agree with this mantra but sadly, as yet, there is still a very long way to go.