Where now for controversial current DfE policies, after Nick Gibb’s exit?

Could some of the most controversial Department for Education policies currently on the stocks have an uncertain future, now that the minister most closely associated with them has been moved on?

Two related initiatives, on initial teacher education and teachers’ professional development, would appear at least to face extra behind-the-scenes turbulence given the surprise departure last night of Nick Gibb, who has served as a schools minister in the Department for Education throughout most of the last 11 years of Conservative-led government.

The move, which from his tweet revealing it appears not to have been of Gibb’s choosing, might also cast some doubt on the future of what could be called “the network”: the repetitively familiar cast of external policy advisers frequently appearing in DfE policy groups and in work with agencies such as Ofsted and Ofqual, often on initiatives associated directly or indirectly with the now-suddenly-erstwhile schools minister.

The detail

The revelation that undoubtedly the most significant education minister since 2010 below the rank of secretary of state – perhaps more significant than many of them – was leaving came in the wake of the much-less-shocking afternoon announcement that Gibb’s nominal boss, Gavin Williamson, had been sacked.

Williamson has made way for Nadhim Zahawi, MP for Stratford-on-Avon, who was promoted from his role as vaccine deployment minister at the Department for Business. Zahawi had been minister for children and families at the DfE under Theresa May’s government in 2018-19.

But for close policy watchers, the real news came just after 9pm, with Gibb announcing via his twitter feed that he was leaving Sanctuary Buildings.

“Congratulations to @nadhimzahawi who will do a superb job in building on the reforms of the last 10 years. I am sad not to be continuing as Schools Minister. It has been a privilege to play a part in helping improve the life chances of the next generation,” he wrote.

Gibb has been the longest-serving of any education minister in recent memory – I certainly cannot recall someone with more years at the DfE since I started covering policy in 1997. Gibb was school standards minister under David Cameron from 2010 to 2012, a backbencher for two years and then minister for school reform in 2014-15, before serving again as school standards minister under Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson from 2015 to 21.

“Bloody hell Nick Gibb’s gone. I assume hell has actually frozen over?” tweeted Sam Freedman, Michael Gove’s former policy adviser during the latter’s time as Education, in comments which seemed to capture the wide sense of surprise among those close to policy.

John Dickens, editor of Schools Week, tweeted that he had “had it confirmed Gibb was sacked”, and this, indeed, again would appear to be the implication of the tweet from Gibb himself.

Those policies

The news seemed particularly surprising – and, possibly, extra significant – given how Gibb’s fingerprints have been, as usual, all over some hotly-contested education policies in recent weeks.

In July, Education Uncovered revealed how some Teaching School Hubs were furious about what was said to be the “extreme centralisation” of DfE plans to stipulate the content of their professional development programmes for teachers.

As the summer holidays loomed, the hubs had been told that a host of courses they were planning to run from September were to be cancelled, civil servants suddenly having told the hub leaders that they were not being allowed to run professional development provision unless it was aligned with government priorities.

I was told that a zoom meeting shortly after the move was announced saw “absolute vitriol” being vented against the idea from more than 100 people involved with the hubs.

Gibb was said to have driven this move, one source saying that his professional background in the “standardised” field of accountancy led to him taking action which was “all about central control and standardisation across the country: everybody does the same”.

The policy, though, appears to have gone ahead as planned this month as far as I am aware. So it is not clear if it will change now with the responsible minister having departed.

Much more high-profile has been the ongoing controversy over the current “market review” of initial teacher training (ITT). The government has faced weeks of mixed headlines over this move, with the Chartered College of Teaching, the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers and even one of its own external advisers joining more usual critics among teachers’ unions and university teacher educators in raising concerns.

Last month, Education Uncovered revealed how both Oxford and Cambridge were warning they would pull out of the sector unless the plans changed, in official responses to the consultation on the issue, which took place quickly over the summer.

A key strand of that criticism has been, again, an alleged over-centralisation of power under the DfE, with both Oxford and Cambridge stating that ministers were effectively seeking to lay down a national curriculum for teacher education, under proposals which would also see universities having to apply repeatedly to the DfE for accreditation in order to operate.

Gibb, again, was the minister overseeing this initiative, although some sources have told me that Rory Gribbell, head of education at Boris Johnson’s Number 10 Policy Unit, who reportedly once worked for Gibb as a “teacher in residence” at the DfE, had been if anything more influential in its development.

Both the ITT review and the teaching hubs CPD work were part of a tightly-specified group of policies, somewhat hubristically entitled the “golden thread” reforms, on teacher education and development, which as a whole were Gibb’s domain.

Questions as to why Gibb went

Where the ITT review goes from now is a very interesting question. Any insights as to why Gibb has gone might help to illuminate answers.

In the absence of too much inside knowledge – it may not be a surprise when I inform you, reader, that I tend to pride myself on not having great access to Number 10 “sources” – it is possible to put forward three hypotheses as to why he might have been pushed.

First, was the ITT row in itself something that the Prime Minister wanted to put a stop to? There are certainly implications in some of the warnings around it which, if they did come to fruition in terms of an alleged threat to the supply of teachers, might come to be seen as a headache the government did not need.

In July, one tweeter put the case succinctly as to how this might be being viewed on the ground: “It would seem that whilst school staff have been working every hour of the pandemic trying to provide education and welfare support for our children the DfE have spent their time creating an entirely new set of unnecessary reforms.”

A university source put it like this: “I think [Gibb] may be the fall guy for dumping large parts of the market review. It was becoming too big a story and antagonising too many people, not just universities.”

It is possible. I wonder, though, whether this might not be too specialist a field to generate sufficient embarrassment to force this government to push out a minister, given just how much controversy has attached itself to Boris Johnson’s administration, without often seeming to prompt such change.

I wonder if the rows over policy as detailed above might indicate a second potential reason why Gibb’s time might finally have been seen as up*, however.

The schools minister has long been at the centre of what could be seen as a defining tension in education policymaking since 2010. While ministers have promoted the merits of professional autonomy – and arguably** legislated on this theme, through the academies policy in particular – Gibb in particular has also sought to ensure his own views on what should be taught carry weight in the classroom.

This has been apparent from the coalition’s reform of the “national curriculum” from 2010 onwards, when Gove and Gibb were very keen on setting out the detail of what should be taught, while also championing the right of schools effectively to go their own way through academies’ ability… not to follow the national curriculum.

As the teaching school hubs row suggests, the notion of setting out so tightly the favoured ministerial approach and stipulating that it must be followed can sit quite uneasily with the notion of professional freedom which academy advocates would emphasise. Gibb, an enthusiastic proponent of the teaching of “systematic synthetic phonics” in schools and, now, in university education departments as emphasised by the ITT review, has often seemed to be much more the embodiment of the centralising elements of DfE policymaking, rather than being truly in line with any sense of devolution through academisation.  

Did this dirigisme end up proving too much for Johnson, given the latter’s frequent portrayal as an instinctive libertarian? It is one possible interpretation of last night’s events, at least.

Either of these first two interpretations might spell trouble for the ITT review, I would venture.

A final possible reason might simply rest on internal Westminster machinations, about which again I can only speculate. Did Zahawi, for example, insist on only taking over from the beleaguered Williamson if the influential Gibb was moved on?

It certainly is more than speculation to suggest that Gibb seemed to wield great power at the DfE. Indeed, as Education Uncovered revealed in May, it was Gibb, rather than Williamson, who appeared to be the hands-on person in policy meetings with external groups. Indeed, it was Gibb who sought to deal with the implications of last year’s exams fiasco, as the schools minister held a series of meetings with exam boards, union leaders and England’s largest academy trust.

Anyone surveying this database of meetings would surmise that it was Gibb, rather than Williamson, who was in charge of much of the day-to-day policymaking within the DfE, at least in his field of schools policy. Indeed, I have sometimes wondered if it might have been better for Number 10 simply to appoint Gibb as education secretary, since at least then the public would be clear who was really in charge.

In any case, would Gibb’s influence have been too much for Zahawi? Again, it is speculation, but it is not hard to imagine such conversations taking place.  

This would seem to be an interpretation with less concrete implications for policy: on this analysis, it was nothing about Gibb’s policymaking per se which was seen as a problem, the change simply reflecting Zahawi’s aversion to a possible power clash with a rival minister. That explanation, in being less policy-focused, might mean that key Gibb policies such as the ITT review could continue, though without the animating drive of their main ministerial sponsor.

It had not been revealed, as of last night, who would replace Gibb, with the DfE homepage listing Zahawi as the new secretary of state, but Gibb’s profile not having been removed.

Finally, on that “network”, the ITT review was led by Ian Bauckham, a multi-academy trust chief executive who combines that job with a role as a seeming perma-adviser to the DfE and associated bodies. Bauckham appears to have very similar traditionalist views to Gibb. He is the most frequently-used external adviser to the DfE among a list of names which will have become very familiar to close observers of education policy, with the DfE frequently turning to “expert groups” to work on policy development. There has been overlap between the membership of these groups and other work in and around Ofsted and Ofqual.

The degree to which such groups will survive, and, if so, whether their membership will continue as it has done, is one of the many interesting questions around Gibb’s departure.

*Is this the end for Gibb as schools minister, though, given that he has come back before? It feels premature to write off yet another comeback in the role, given the history.

**I say “arguably” as academisation has not always translated into “professional” autonomy. Anyone reading this website’s detailed coverage of Future Academies, for example, will know that ultimately the trust is controlled by a couple without a teaching background, Lord and Lady Nash, and sometimes decisions can be taken on core aspects of provision such as the curriculum despite serious unhappiness by the professionally qualified teachers who staff the schools. A key aspect of the academies policy since it was established under Labour was the handing control of schools to external “sponsors”, who tended not to be professionals, through academy trusts’ governance structures.