The 'sadness' is not a reflection of views about Robin Walker so much as a recognition of Nick Gibb's major contribution to ensuring research-informed teacher-training and provision for children in England.
Nick Gibb has a great track record for ensuring the official implementation of research-informed 'Systematic Synthetic Phonics' in England - including the instigation of a House of Commons inquiry back in 2005 leading to Sir Jim Rose's world-renowned independent review into the teaching of early reading in 2006.
The, then, government in 2006 accepted the findings of Sir Jim Rose who recommended that the National Literacy Strategy 'searchlights' multi-cueing (word-guessing) reading strategies should be replaced by a professional understanding of the two main processes of being a reader as shown in the 'Simple View of Reading' - the model first described by researchers Gough and Tunmer way back in 1986.
Nick Gibb was instrumental in a Department for Education 'match funded phonics initiative' in 2011 to 2013. And in 2012, the statutory Year One Phonics Screening Check was introduced which has achieved a great deal with regard to focusing infant teachers on the effectiveness of their phonics provision.
Nick Gibb has also overseen 'Phonics Roadshows' to promote the need for quality systematic synthetic phonics provision and, more latterly, established 34 'English Hubs' with outreach capacity and public funding for schools to purchase SSP programmes and their training, and decodable reading books.
England's 2013/14 National Curriculum for English for Key Stages 1 (infants) and 2 (juniors) also describes the features for provision as encapsulated by the Simple View of Reading and the English alphabetic code with phonics for reading and spelling.
Finally, a new guidance document was published only this year (2021) along with a renewed round of 'DfE validation' for full systematic synthetic phonics programmes (July 2021 to March 2022):
https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... f-literacyPolicy paper
The reading framework: teaching the foundations of literacy
Guidance for schools to meet existing expectations for teaching early reading.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... -programmeGuidance
Choosing a phonics teaching programme
Sets out what the government is doing to help schools choose a phonics teaching programme.