The government has come under fire for opening bids for a curriculum fund aimed at cutting teacher workload at the start of the summer holiday.

Schools can start applying for money from the £7.7 million pot today, with a cut-off date of 17 September – just two weeks into the new academic year.

Rachel Gooch, a national leader of governance who tweets as @SchoolDuggery, tweeted:

She added:

Last week, the DfE chose a Saturday morning at the end of term to release a series of online resources aimed at helping schools to cut teachers’ workload.

The curriculum fund will give school grants to help share teaching resources with other schools, with the aim of saving teachers from having to repeatedly create lesson plans from scratch.

The DfE said that funding for the pilot of the programme “is for schools that have developed knowledge-rich curriculum programmes”.

The pilot will run from January 2019 for two terms, and will be open to schools with programmes in history, geography and/or science, for key stages 2 and/or 3.

Schools standards minister Nick Gibb said: “Having easy access to high-quality curriculum resources will not just save teachers time, it will make it easier for them to deliver knowledge-rich and engaging lessons that help young people to acquire the knowledge and skills they need.

“This fund will help great schools share resources that they know are effective. This will help to spread excellent teaching practices and continue the drive to raise standards in our schools.”