The government tried to block Tes enquiries into how much Oak National Academy staff would receive in publicly funded salaries, by claiming the information would be “commercially sensitive”. 

Questioning from Tes has led the online academy to share its overall pay bill this afternoon on social media, saying that of its £4.3 million Department for Education (DfE) grant for next year, £2.7m will be spent on staff costs.

However individual salaries have yet to be released. And the DfE was even less forthcoming over Oak National Academy pay. When asked by Tes, it said it could not give details of what the funding agreement entails because this was commercially sensitive.

Oak National Academy: Lockdown saviour or DfE tool?

Exclusive: DfE fail means remote learning bill for poor

Background: Oak National Academy to start paying its teachers

The academy has also used commercial sensitivity as a reason for not revealing how much it has paid to PR and design consultancies.

“They’ve all given us substantial but commercially sensitive discounts, so we’re not able to disclose exact amounts,” it said.

Asked to reveal its highest salaries, Oak told Tes it would shortly be advertising “vacant year-long roles”, which will include salary details.

“We believe in fair pay, so we have benchmarked against civil service, school and charity roles,” it said.

“For example, our senior leadership team will be paid within the bottom half of the lowest senior civil servant pay band.”

However, Tes understands it is yet to be decided whether all current jobs will be advertised - meaning it is possible some salaries will not be revealed as part of that process.

Last month, Tes revealed that Oak did not have to bid for the government funding that will allow it to carry on in September.

It is understood that the DfE sees Oak as an emergency response to the coronavirus crisis and that because of the need to deliver the programme at pace, it did not regard it as possible to invite bids for the project.

We’ve had some questions this week about our @OakNational staff team, budgets and pay. So we wanted to share all of that openly ?

- Matt Hood (@matthewhood) July 13, 2020

The £2.7m figure provided by Oak covers roles across the curriculum team, lesson production and support, operations, external relations and technology.

A further £1.6m will be spent on non-staff costs, the majority of which are technology costs - particularly the cost of hosting each lesson, plus communicating to schools and users.

On the PR and design consultancies spend, Oak said: “Johnson Banks created our brand within a week, Havas initially helped us out with external relations before handing to PLMR ahead of making some permanent hires.

“They have been helping us with things like engaging with a wide range of stakeholders, webinars (which were attended by 5,000 teachers last week), our social media and press enquiries.”

The academy added: “Our charity’s total budget is roughly similar to that of a secondary school and if we continue to reach four million children this will equate to under £1.50 per pupil for the year.

“We hope teachers think this is fair value for a free resource available to any school who needs it during a challenging year ahead.”