Oak National Academy was relaunched today as a new independent arm’s’ length body, with plans to spend £8 million on purchasing new lesson resources.
It was announced today that Oak is set to receive £43 million in funding over the next three years.
The curriculum body is set to publish a Prior Information Notice on its website today giving notice of an initial round of procurement for the first tranche of subjects: English, maths, science, music, geography and history, which are set to be rolled out from September 2023.
The proposed value for the procurement process for Oak National Academy’s first round of subjects will be around £8 million.
The government has said it will use £6.6 million in contingency funding to help establish the body, which it will then seek parliamentary approval to cover.
On lesson procurement, Tes understands that Oak is looking for a range of organisations - including schools, trusts, subject associations and publishers - to join the procurement for the first cycle, with the second procurement to follow in 2023-24.
Oak National Academy reborn as curriculum resources quango
Oak will be looking for partnerships in which providers can give curriculum expertise, good sequencing and curriculum maps, among other strengths, Tes understands.
Organisations could already have some or all lessons that implement their curriculum or could show they have the ability to turn their curriculum into lessons.
Oak is also set to hold market engagement webinars later this month to allow potential partners to find out more.
The first will take place on Wednesday 21 September from 4-5.30pm with a second on Thursday 22 September, 12-1.30pm.
Included in the proposals is the suggestion that Oak’s future resources are shared on a Creative Commons copyright licence. This will “allow any school the ability to freely use and adapt the content in non-commercial platforms or products”.
Matthew Hood will continue to hold the position of chief executive at Oak on an interim basis, with a public appointment process to take place.
Two additional board members have also joined the interim board. Henry de Zoete, entrepreneur and former advisor to Michael Gove when he was education secretary has been appointed because of his knowledge on product development and technology.
And Louise Thompson, partner at KMPG, has been appointed given her expertise in finance, risk and audit.
The second annual independent impact report for Oak from ImpactEd was also published today, the result of a quantitative survey with 956 participants (both Oak and non-Oak users).
The report suggests that Oak users had a statistically significant higher wellbeing score than non-Oak users and the national benchmark.
However, the report says that as participants in the research were not randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, “it is hard to tell if these results are because of Oak or if those people who tend to use Oak already have certain characteristics that make them more likely to have a higher wellbeing score”.
Oak ‘still important for system resilience’
The report says that Oak was “still important for system resilience” with usage data showing peaks of teachers sharing lesson links when the Covid-19 Omicron variant intensified and when Storm Eunice caused school closures in February.
It also highlights a “very high correlation between Department for Education (DfE) data on pupil absences and lesson starts”.
The report suggests that Oak users tended to be more positive about their workload and “were likely to say that Oak had saved them time”.
It adds that 42 per cent of Oak users surveyed reported that the platform had “saved them time related to their job (an average weekly time saved of three hours)”, compared with 9 per cent of users who reported that Oak had added time to their job.
The final sign-off on the transfer of Oak from The Reach Foundation to the Department for Education took place last Thursday, with a major curriculum partner, United Learning, making the decision not to transfer the intellectual property copyright to Oak, instead setting up its own site, Continuity Oak.
Tes understands that United Learning made the move having voiced concerns since March this year over the proposals for Oak.
This means that a significant portion of key stage 4 and some key stage 3 resources will no longer be available on the Oak site.
The new impact report on Oak shows there was a higher proportion of secondary school users in comparison with primary schools this year.
Today, Mr Hood said he was ”delighted that Oak National Academy” launches today in its “next chapter”.
He said: “Supporting teachers with developing their curriculum, and tackling workload through sharing quality resources, is not a job Oak can do alone. Our approach will be to build an open, broad and national collaboration. We want to work with a wide range of teachers, schools, subject associations, publishers and other experts to co-create new curriculum packages.”
He also reaffirmed the position that Oak resources will “always remain free, totally optional and adaptable”.
