Sir Nick Gibb: former UK Minister of Schools reveals how he plans to help turn NZ's education stats around

Education Minister Erica Stanford has called in some help from international experts in a bid to get the nation's education stats on the up.

Former UK Minister of Schools, Sir Nick Gibb, led similar charges a decade ago - and the UK went from the bottom of OECD ranking to 4th in the world for reading and 11th for maths.

He's consulting with Erica Stanford - and he's revealed what New Zealand can learn from its international counterparts.

"We looked to East Asia to see how maths was taught - the people at the top of the tables - and we basically copied and learned from those countries and we brought that method into England. That's why we have risen in terms of reading and in terms of maths as well."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now the Education Minister Erica Stanford has called on some

(00:03):
advice on her massive educational reforms former UK Minister of Schools.
The former UK Minister of Schools is a man called
Sir Nick Gibb. He led similar charges in the changes
in the twenty ten with huge impact on reading in
math skills, and just fifteen years ago the UK was
at the bottom of the OECD's PISA rankings. Fast forward
to today, they're now sitting fourth in the world for

(00:24):
reading an eleventh for mats. So let's have a chat
to Sir Nick Gibb NICKELLO, Hello, how did you turn
those rankings around.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
By engaging in the sort of reforms that Erica Stamford
is implementing in New Zealand. So we introduced structural structured literacy,
which we call phonics in England. Massage. Your children are
taught the sounds of the alphabet and how to blend
them into words, as opposed to the previous method we
had in England, whole language and so on. That it

(00:53):
really wasn't working for too many children, so we implemented that.
We looked to East Asia see how math was taught
the people at the top of the League tables and
we basically copied and learned from those countries. We brought
that method into England. That's why we have risen in
terms of reading and in terms of maths as well.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Is it going to say it's going back to the
way that you or I might have learned to read
and do mets.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yes, But on top of that, there's been some huge
advance advances in colative science, so we know a lot
more now about how children learn, and we've based a
lot of our reforms on that new science scientific research,
So the importance of knowledge now has been demonstrated to
show that by having a curriculum that's knowledge rich, children

(01:37):
acquire skills such as problem solving and creativity and critical
thinking in a much better way than previously educationists have thought.
And I've been visiting schools today with the Education Minister
and seen some of the effects of those reforms in school.
So children are learning to read here better than before,

(01:58):
and their approach to math is far more effective than
previous methods. And we've seen in our country how effective
first methods are.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Nick, what advice are you actually providing, Eerica, I mean
it seems to me she already kind of knows what
she needs to do, doesn't.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
She She absolutely does. When I first saw her speak
in London and realized this is a minister that really
knows what she wants to do, which is essentially a
closed attainment gap between those children disadvanced backgrounds and to
make sure that New Zealand is rising in those international details.
And that was my worry in England that we were
falling before twenty ten in those league tables, and that's

(02:33):
where we engage in a very significant series of reforms
in England. And now, as you said in your introduction,
with how rising in those league tables, we're fourth in
reading and eleventh in maths in the world. Erica and
I have known each other for a couple of years
now and what I've been able to do is to
talk about what worked with our reforms, but also the

(02:54):
things that did not go well, so that you know,
Erica implementing her reforms in this country doesn't need to
make the same mistakes that we made, such as what
well the pace of reform, the compromises that you have
to make in introducing reforms. Those are the kind of mistakes,
if you could argue, that we made in England, and

(03:15):
there's no need for similar mistakes to be made when
reforming in this country. And now people are coming to
New Zealand to look at the reforms happening in this country.
So the reforms that are being implemented here are world
leading and I think you're going to have a very
successful education system in the years to come.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Do you feel that you did it too fast or
too slow?

Speaker 2 (03:36):
We were learning? I was the minister for ten years
and we engage in a very expensive series of reforms,
not just a math and English, but the whole curriculum
to our qualifications. We changed the structure of our school
system as well. So there was a very very extensive
system of reform. But unless we had gone at pace,
and unless those reforms have been as extensive as they

(03:56):
had been, we would not have seen the huge improvements
in schools in our country. And you go to any
school now in England and you'll see very effective teaching
of reading using fonights. You'll see to really understanding the
mathematics that they are being taught, and you'll meet children
who really know a lot about the cultural and history
of our country and who are deeply immersed in science

(04:20):
and that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been introducing
those reforms at pace.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
No, how on Earth? And this is a question I
have been asking on the show lately because we have
been basically, we're undoing a lot of the stupid stuff
that's been done by an education department in the last
fifty years or so. But how on earth did we
go down this path where we had a perfectly good
way of teaching reading, for example, and we just screwed
it up.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Well, lots of the reforms sound very compelling, and they
sound superficially attractive. Teaching a competence space Crickland sounds very
modern and scientific, but actually the evidence that it just
doesn't work. And I think people were taken in by
the attractiveness of those arguments. But what we now know,
we know a lot more about how children learn about

(05:08):
cognitive science, and we need to make sure that our curriculum,
that our teaching methods, our structure of assessment reflects the
latest scientific knowledge. And that's what we have introduced in
England and what Erica Stanford is introducing in New Zealand.
So some of it does sound very very traditional, but
actually it is based on a modern understanding of qualitive science.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Nick, it's been very very good to talk to you.
I really appreciate your time. That soon Ni Gibb, former
UK Minister of Schools. For more from Hither Duplessy Alan Drive,
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