The jury is still out on the usefulness of Oak National Academy to schools, heads warned as the government’s remote learning provider unveiled its new curriculum resources.
Oak National Academy - a government arm’s length body set up to help schools deliver curriculum content - has launched lesson resources for teachers that aim to represent the diversity of modern life and cut teacher workload.
However, in a survey earlier this month more than half of teachers said their workload had not been reduced by using Oak National Academy.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said there was “a lot of concern” in the sector about whether Oak’s resources could “end up driving other providers out of the market and reducing diversity”.
Oak announced today that it’s new curriculum materials for English lessons feature contemporary black British writers Andrea Levy and Winsome Pinnock - alongside texts from the literary canon, such as Chaucer and Shakespeare.
Classroom resources for music cover rap and 90s grunge alongside Mozart and Beethoven, and for history there are resources for interpreting the British Empire.
Doubts about Oak National Academy
Mr Barton said heads “recognised the work that has gone into developing these resources and the good intentions of Oak” but “the jury is still out on its usefulness”.
He added that Oak was backed by a “considerable amount of taxpayers’ money” and warned that “there is a lot of concern in the sector about whether it will actually end up driving other providers out of the market and reducing diversity, despite reassurances to the contrary”.
Mr Barton that it was “hard to see exactly where Oak fits” in as many schools and trusts had already ”developed their own curriculum resources for their contexts”.
Matt Hood, chief executive of Oak National Academy, said that Oak had “paid particular attention to making sure that the curriculum represents the best of what has been thought, said, discovered, sung and danced”.
“We have selected topics that, when taken together, give pupils a rich understanding of the world and allow them to participate as educated citizens in modern society.”
The Department for Education is facing potential of legal action over Oak due to concerns that its creation poses an “existential risk to the future viability of the [educational publishing] sector”.
