What Bridget Phillipson can learn from Conservative education policy

New Statesman​

2 days ago

Photo byIt's fitting that the new book by former Conservative schools minister Nick Gibb reads like a textbook. Part memoir, part manual, Reforming Lessons is both a guide to implementing the policies Gibb introduced under his tenure; and a defence of those policies. For me, reading it is personal. As a new maths teacher in 2009, I watched his reforms roll through the school gates. A few years later, as a Labour education advisor, I spent my time critiquing them. Now, as a parent, I am teaching my son to read with the very literacy strategies he promoted.
If international league tables are the yardstick – and the Conservatives said they would be – it's little wonder they view their record on schools as a success. Since 2009, England's performance in literacy and numeracy has markedly improved. Throughout the book, Gibb repeatedly cites England's rise in Pisa (the programme for international student assessment) and Pirls (the progress in international reading literacy study) rankings. The reform that takes much of the credit is the one most closely associated with Gibb: the drive for teaching children to read by systematic synthetic phonics.
If you work in schools, early years, or are a parent of a young child, you've likely encountered phonics. This highly structured method teaches reading by blending letter sounds. Though the approach has existed for centuries, it fell out of favour in the 20th century, when some derided it as too rigid or 'teacher-led'. Instead, more 'child-centered' strategies became popular, such as memorising 'whole-words' or using picture cues to identify words.
But while these approaches gained ground in classrooms, cognitive scientists were running experiments to better understand how humans learn to read. Their findings revealed that skilled readers don't rely on contextual cues but instead recognise words as sequences of letters. Over time, a substantial body of evidence built up pointing to phonics as the most effective method for teaching reading.
Gibb recounts how he first encountered the so-called 'reading wars' in 2003 when he joined the Education Select Committee. The chapter is a case study in how to drive reform from the backbenches. The then-Labour government began embedding phonics in all primary schools in 2007. When Gibb became schools minister in 2010, he put rocket boosters under the policy, providing funding for approved programmes and accountability via the phonics reading check, which nearly 90 per cent now pass by the end of Year 2.
The success of the phonics reform is hard to dispute. Gibb doesn't mention PIAAC (the programme for the international assessment of adult competencies), perhaps reflecting a blind spot on further education. If he had, he could have drawn attention to the notable improvement in the literacy and numeracy skills of 16- to 24-year-olds in the 2023 results. England is now one of only three countries to show gains in literacy over the past decade. These are the young people who began school after phonics became mainstream. My nephew attends a nursery in Canada, which proudly told my sister they were adopting the 'English approach' to early reading. In a public sector where much feels broken, it's refreshing to be world-leading in something.
England's gains are not limited to literacy. International data also shows a sharp improvement in maths. Gibb attributes this to another of his flagship reforms: the introduction of a 'knowledge-rich' national curriculum.
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The knowledge vs skills debate during his tenure was even more heated than the reading wars. Yet the evidence he presents is hard to ignore. Cognitive psychology suggests that so-called 'generic skills', like critical thinking, cannot be developed in isolation without a strong foundation of knowledge. To persuade readers further, Gibb introduces concepts such as 'working memory' and 'cognitive overload', explaining that higher-order thinking skills emerge from domain-specific knowledge. He points to two 'natural experiments' created by the devolved education systems of Scotland and Wales, where governments pursued skills-based curricula. In contrast to England's results, Scotland and Wales have declined.
A central theme in Reforming Lessons is that these reforms are not inherently conservative. They are informed by modern cognitive science and go well beyond the idea of traditional teaching. Gibb argues that equalising access to knowledge has a natural home on the political left, among those committed to social justice and closing the attainment gap. But he is also overly critical of the current government. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has shown she understands these principles, announcing Labour's plan for a core curriculum that is 'knowledge-rich down to its bones' and committing to finding a phonics equivalent for maths.
The book has other tensions. Gibb's attempt to reconcile granting schools freedom over their own curriculum, while prescribing specific pedagogies, doesn't quite convince. In one chapter, he praises a former chief inspector of Ofsted for insisting that the inspectorate has no preferred teaching style; in another, he commends their successor for steering schools towards a knowledge-rich curriculum.
Nor does he dwell on what his government got wrong. Yet mistakes were serious. His department missed initial teacher training targets during a pupil population boom. Gibb tries to blame Covid, but Labour had been warning about teacher shortfalls as early as 2015. Recruitment is now beginning to improve under the new government.
None of these errors compares to the legacy left on Send (special educational needs and disabilities). The Department for Education's own accounts now define the Send cost pressures as a major and worsening risk. Addressing this will likely dominate Labour's education agenda. It's the book's most glaring omission.
It's not the purpose of Reforming Lessons to set out what should come next – but it's a shame there isn't more guidance on how the government might build on his reforms. Labour's opportunity mission offers ready vehicles. The new best start hubs could help parents reinforce early reading at home. At the other end of the system, technical excellence colleges could demonstrate that vocational education also benefits from pedagogical principles developed from cognitive science: strong foundations, careful modelling, and deliberate practice.
Despite its gaps, the book offers a valuable lesson for politicians and advisors: mastery of a brief matters. Over the same period that Gibb was in post, there were 15 different housing ministers. His knowledge of education and the schools system is vast. He ends the book reflecting on how much time he spent reading and thinking about education. Ministers today – and their opposition shadows – would be wise to take note.
[See more: The British public aren't who you think they are]
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