Over half of teachers say they are “struggling” to find “free or affordable materials” to support classroom learning, according to survey results that the Oak National Academy principal is set to unveil in a speech today.
The survey also shows that a third of teachers believe the quality of available curriculum resources is a “major challenge”, Matt Hood will say in a speech to education leaders today.
However, less than one in six of the 5,140 people who responded to the survey carried out by Teacher Tapp for Oak said they wanted more curriculum help from the Department for Education, Mr Hood will reveal.
He will argue this underlines the “importance that support comes via an independent body that is by teachers, for teachers”.
Mr Hood will also use his speech at the Festival of Education to say it is time to “bust the myth” that teachers have to choose between their autonomy and a manageable workload.
He will say it is “perfectly possible” for teachers to “avoid creating every aspect of a curriculum from scratch, along with all the elements of every lesson, which results in often crippling teacher workload, while rejecting top-down, centralisation with no teacher agency and diminishing expertise”.
The findings follow an earlier Teacher Tapp poll of more than 4,600 teachers for the British Educational Suppliers’ Association (BESA), which found that nearly three-quarters (71 per cent) of teachers are worried about their autonomy in the classroom if the government were to ask schools to use department-approved resources.
But today’s survey suggests that teachers working in deprived areas and those newer to the profession do particularly struggle to find suitable resources, Mr Hood will say.
In March, Tes revealed that Oak was to be made into a new government arm’s-length body (ALB) designed to provide free curriculum resources to schools across the UK.
Since then, the DfE has been threatened with legal action over this plan.
Tes revealed last month that the move to file a judicial review had been paused at the eleventh hour.
And today, Mr Hood will say that teachers will “always need” to “adapt”, “contextualise” and “tailor to their pupils”.
Mr Hood will say he wants to hear from all parts of the sector including teachers, schools, trusts and other experts, saying he believes there is “so much great work in the system”.
“Our role is to facilitate you to share it. And whatever you put in, I know we’ll all get more out.”
Figures published by Oak this week show that 150 million Oak lessons have been completed and nearly two and a half million quizzes, slides and worksheets have been downloaded from the remote learning platform.
Last week, Tes revealed that the DfE had struck a deal to pay Oak’s curriculum partners for the copyright of lesson resources they had previously provided for free to the online academy, originally designed to support schools during periods of closure due to the Covid pandemic.
The plans for a UK-wide national academy were first mooted in the government’s Levelling Up White Paper in February, as revealed by Tes.
