Creating Oak National Academy as a national arm’s-length body is needed to address “weaknesses in curriculum design and delivery” in England’s schools, according to a new Department for Education report.
It concludes that “without government intervention” the standard of “curriculum design and implementation” could “remain too low to achieve our wider aims for education recovery and Levelling Up”.
These findings are revealed in the long-awaited government business case for Oak, which has been published today by the Cabinet Office, two months after the organisation was relaunched as an arm’s-length body (ALB).
The document says there are two “main curriculum problems” in England’s schools: “Weaknesses in curriculum design and delivery, as reported by Ofsted; and excessive teacher workload associated with curriculum planning.”
The business case concludes that the DfE can only improve curriculum delivery “on the fast timelines required to support education recovery by getting teachers to engage with high quality curriculum resources”.
It adds that an organisation is needed to lead this process, acting as a “system leader”.
The DfE business case says that the department would be unlikely to be successful if it did this directly as “teachers and schools are unlikely to buy into a process or set of resources that feels centrally imposed by government.”
It adds: “This business case concludes a public body that is at arm’s length from government reconciles the trade-off between independence from government and strategic alignment with government policy more effectively.”
Last month, Tes revealed that the DfE was once again facing the threat of legal action over its decision to establish Oak National Academy as an ALB, as the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) sent the department a letter before claim, informing the department that it is considering seeking a judicial review over what it believes are unlawful actions.
Today’s business case acknowledges that there is a ”theoretical case that the curriculum body could have some negative impact on the commercial market for curriculum resources” but that “the impact is likely to be lower than that suggested by the market”.
The business case continues that the market “has not been able to provide robust evidence for its position, particularly as its views appear to be based on a number of assumptions that we do not believe are correct”.
The business case also stresses the importance of ”addressing the underlying issues of lack of teacher buy-in to the need to engage with high quality curriculum resources”.
The case concludes that, currently, “analysis suggests we will not get enough teachers to engage with the resources to have the scale of impact we want” and there will need to be “a process of working with the system to secure teacher buy-in into high quality resources and using them in the right way”.
The business case proposes Oak as the “system leader” in this ambition.
The case for the curriculum body argues that, without government intervention, “the standard of curriculum design and implementation may well remain too low to achieve our wider aims for education recovery and Levelling Up”.
The business case says it has considered expanding an existing ALB to accommodate Oak but assessed that none of the DfE’s existing ALBs are suitable for this.
It added: “The closest potential candidate would be the Standards and Testing Agency, but senior representatives have assessed this is not a viable solution.”
The business case also sets out other options which the the department has considered.
These are listed as “do nothing, do minimum through ongoing grant funding of Oak, and a pure procurement”.
But the DfE says these other options were not sufficient. If nothing was done, it claims the “policy problem” would not be addressed and it “would mean losing Oak as an asset”.
It said using a procured provider would “struggle to have the legitimacy and therefore sector buy-in required”.
The report also says that the option of continuing to grant fund Oak was rejected. However the next section of the report is redacted so no further explanation is provided.
At the beginning of September, Oak National Academy was relaunched as a new independent ALB.
The ALB announced it would receive £43 million in public funding over the next three years, with £8 million of that budget going towards purchasing new lesson resources.
The government also said that it will use £6.6 million in contingency funding to help establish the body.
