(1 year, 10 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Vaizey of Didcot
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of their funding for Oak National Academy on the publishing and education technology sectors in the United Kingdom.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to have an opportunity to discuss this important subject. I want to take this opportunity to put on record my praise for the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Evans, which I was lucky enough to hear as I came in to prepare for this debate. May I also put on record my nervousness at appearing between my noble friend Lady Barran, one of our most formidable Ministers, and my noble friend Lady Evans, our former Leader of the House? I know this at least: both of them are going to give me both barrels. I have no idea what the other noble Lords and noble Baronesses in the Room are going to say on this issue.
I must quickly declare my interests. I advise a number of education technology companies, including Digital Futures and Perlego; they are not affected by Oak National Academy. I chair the UK-ASEAN Business Council, which includes Pearson as a member. I am a governor of St Paul’s School. I also advise an investment fund that invests in an education technology company that is nervous about Oak.
About 15 years ago, when I was a Member of Parliament in Oxfordshire, which has a significant number of education publishing companies, the BBC set up a free education service for schools called BBC Jam. It was a noble endeavour. We will talk about the pandemic in a moment—and we saw what a great and important role the BBC played during that time in terms of supporting our children. However, a lot of my constituents who worked for those education publishers came to me to raise their concerns, which I, as their MP at the time, felt were perfectly legitimate. They were in private companies that had to make a profit and compete in the marketplace but, frankly, when it comes to providing curriculum resources for schools, it is very hard indeed to compete against what is free. They felt that the BBC was overreaching itself, despite its noble aim in doing this, and had not taken account of the impact that its resources would have on the thriving private sector market that existed in the UK. I campaigned against it. It is not popular to campaign against motherhood and apple pie, but we were successful because, luckily, unlike the Government, the BBC had a regulator at the time, the BBC Trust, which looked at this matter and was under an obligation to look at the market impact of BBC initiatives. It decided that BBC Jam was a step too far, and withdrew the service.
Now, we switch to today and the Oak National Academy, which I would assert is a similar intervention in what is a very important marketplace. Again, Oak was set up with the absolute best of intentions. It was there to support our children during the pandemic, when they had to learn at home. It was a platform for education technology companies and education publishers. Indeed, I am given to understand that education technology companies gave something like £24 million-worth of resources, as they quantify it, to the Oak platform for free, while education publishers donated something like £8.5 million-worth of free content to Oak.
At the time it was, I believe, regarded as a temporary and appropriate intervention at a time when almost all pupils were having to take lessons and be taught online to ensure that a core curriculum of resources was available online. Obviously, it would be quite difficult for technology resources that a school had procured and that existed on its own systems then to be translated to individual pupils while they were working at home. However, unfortunately, it has proved not to be a temporary measure. Last year, the Oak National Academy became an arm’s-length body. It has £43 million of funding over three years, it is apparently intending to recruit, or has already recruited, something like 83 staff over the next three years, and its mission is to distribute a full set of curriculum resources. The announcement was made in March 2022, and the business case was published only in November after, in fact, Oak had already been established as an arm’s-length body.
Oak has one achievement to its name: it has already united the British Educational Suppliers Association, the Publishers Association, the Society of Authors—not known for its radical nature—and the teaching unions to oppose it and raise their concerns. My concern is that, in publishing, we have one of the most successful creative industries in the world and, in our education technology sector, again, one of the most successful sectors in the world. The education publishing sector alone in this country is worth some £552 million, about £354 million of which is exports. Some 40% of European investment in education technology companies goes to companies based in the UK. It is the fourth-largest sector in the world. In terms of joined-up government, the Government have announced their intention to achieve a target of £35 billion in education exports by 2030. Obviously, a lot of that includes our highly successful universities attracting foreign students to come and study here, but there is no doubt that an education technology sector that has a thriving home market has the opportunity to expand around the world.
The creation of Oak has already had an impact. We find ourselves in the insidious position whereby individual companies that come and talk to me will not go public. That is for two reasons: first, they do not want, as it were, to bite the hand that could potentially feed them—they do not want to make an enemy of the Department for Education. Secondly, they rely on their investors to have confidence, so they will not go public and say, “I’m sorry. Our domestic market has been upended”, but they tell me that their investors are already saying to them, “We’re not going to put more money into you if you’re going to concentrate on the UK market. We want you to look at markets elsewhere because we don’t think the UK market is going to be viable in the long term.”
Another point, and this is not just to promote the private sector overall, is about understanding what teachers actually want—and I am sure that other noble Peers will have a much greater understanding of that. Lots of opinion polls and surveys are going around about whether Oak is helping or not helping teachers, but my fundamental concern is that teachers want access to the bespoke resources that suit them as individuals or as schools, and they want a wide choice in curriculum materials but, in effect and slightly insidiously—because Oak is not making it clear that it is effectively a creature of the Department for Education —they are getting a nationalised, one-size-fits-all technology resource on which they have to draw. The more this goes on, the less competition there will be in the sector, the less innovation there will be, and the less autonomy teachers will have in choosing the resources they feel are appropriate for them and their pupils. It is a kick in the teeth to the many entrepreneurs who have a genuine passion for the kind of companies they are creating to provide resources for our schools, and it is a threat to the employment of the many hundreds of thousands of people who work across the education publishing and technology sector.
The Government and my noble friend should perhaps address three or four important questions at the conclusion of this debate, but no doubt she will hear many other opinions. First, there appears to have been no real consultation about why the Oak National Academy would be turned into an arm’s-length body or on this incredibly important intervention in the education market without taking account of the wide variety of opinion on whether it was the right thing to do. There has been an impact assessment—but my second question is whether the Government are really going to keep a watching brief on what will happen to the sector, because they rejected the submissions they received about the potential impact on the market. There are also questions about the data protection policies of the Oak National Academy and its ability to share data with third parties. Is it going to be clear about how it uses the data that it gleans from teachers and schools and who it shares it with?
My final question is: what is the Government’s fundamental thinking behind creating the Oak National Academy? What do they want it to look like in three, five or 10 years’ time? Will it be, as people suspect, the one-size-fits-all resource for education technology? Will schools be discouraged from going out to other providers to find the resources that they need and want? Instead of being defensive about Oak, or trying to obfuscate the purpose of establishing it, the Government should be clear.
One of the greatest difficulties we have had, of course, is that we have had dozens of Education Ministers coming and going over the last couple of years—I think we had one who served for 24 hours. I first got engaged with this when Nadhim Zahawi was the Education Secretary; then it was somebody else and it is now Gillian Keegan. We need a Minister who is the department for slightly more than 10 minutes to take an interest and have a long-term view on this intervention.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, I start by declaring my interests as a director of CENTURY Tech and of Suklaa. I also thank and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, for securing this debate and opening it in the way he did. I must also pay tribute to the founders of Oak for quickly establishing a useful set of resources during the early stages of the pandemic. Their success in attracting large amounts of public money has also been impressive; their continued success in doing so with limited process and scrutiny is of course extraordinary.
Five years ago, I was part of the executive team at Tes Global selling our large education business from one owner to another. I fielded countless questions about the impact on our recruitment business of the DfE setting up a rival recruitment platform. I did my best to reassure them that the teacher vacancy service would be a waste of public money because, however good the product, the Government do not understand the behaviours in the market. I am happy to have subsequently been proven right but, meanwhile, the DfE actions spooked investors and cost us millions in lost value. I now hear from similar investors who are assessing a British digital publisher of educational resources that is up for sale. What will be the impact of the DfE pouring £43 million into Oak? Why have the Government acquired a publisher? Are they going to start buying other publishers? I can reassure them on most points, but it is an added uncertainty that will cost another British business.
This is at the heart of my concern about the establishment of Oak as an arm’s-length body. It will damage the ability to grow of British businesses which need significant overseas investment, but which will be put off by this inexplicable intervention. I know this is not the intention of government or the people at the top of Oak; it is an unintended consequence of blundering into a successful, functioning market.
The reality is that there are plenty of high-quality educational resources being published all the time for teachers in England. Plenty are free and some are charged for. When I managed Tes resources, we regularly had over 1 million downloads every day by teachers of content created by other teachers. We made very little money from it but teachers loved us for it because we saved them huge amounts of time. There are many more—from Twinkl to more video-based offerings from the likes of Oak, to more personalised AI-powered resources that also include assessment, like CENTURY. These digital publishers then also compete with more traditional textbook publishers. There is lots of quality and lots of provision—why intervene? There are three possible reasons: to make it easier for teachers to find what they want; to further improve quality or value; or to increase central control over what resources are used.
I am not against an arm’s-length body for curriculum resources—one that specifies standards, agrees with the sector an API to improve the interoperability of resources from different publishers, and ensures that copyright and data protection are fully respected. These would all be valuable and appropriate functions for a government intervention to improve the functioning of the market. It could even call itself Oak for old time’s sake; it might even hold the old Oak content on its platform. But the takeover of Oak by government is about control. Why else would the DfE acquire an educational publisher? It has its own narrow view of what a good lesson should look like in pursuit of its narrow vision of a knowledge-rich curriculum. It wants to dictate to teaching professionals, not to respect their judgment in their contexts. And it wants to impose this through its new teacher training reforms, its prescription of the curriculum and this influence on pedagogy. This arm’s-length body is bad value for money, bad for education and bad for growth in education business.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I too welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate and I thank my noble friend for securing it. I am sure all noble Lords agree on the importance of providing teachers with high-quality resources to support them in delivering the curriculum to the highest possible standard.
I know from my time running the New Schools Network, which worked with groups setting up schools, particularly in deprived areas, that establishing and delivering an outstanding curriculum is a complex and challenging process. Research suggests that teachers spend up to five hours a week searching online for resources or creating lessons from scratch, adding to their already significant workload. With workload regularly cited as the number one concern of teachers, and indeed a significant reason for those leaving the profession, it is absolutely right that measures be taken to help reduce this burden.
I entirely agree that a vibrant and competitive market for curriculum resources which enables teachers to pick what is best for their pupils has an important role to play in this area. But rather than fatally undermine that, as we have heard and as I am sure we will hear more, the establishment of Oak National Academy as an arm’s-length body provides an opportunity to collaborate with and complement this commercial market, as well as to increase the variety and quality of resources available to teachers.
As has been said, Oak was created during the pandemic to provide free access to thousands of teacher-made, fully resourced lessons. Its focus is on improving teachers’ curriculum expertise while reducing their workloads. Independent research has found that Oak reduces workload by about three hours per week for around half of teacher users. In the context of today’s debate, Oak’s own data shows that there is plenty of space for it alongside commercial offers as, according to its most recent findings, no teachers were using Oak as their only source of material.
To allay some of the understandable concerns of firms currently operating in the publishing and educational tech sector about Oak’s potential impact, the Government have made it clear in their business case that it will not overlap with key elements of the commercial curriculum resources market. For instance, it will not create aids for phonics or A-levels, or provide CPD. Furthermore, Oak’s material will be accessible only digitally; it will not provide physical resources such as textbooks. In another step to encourage collaboration with the commercial market, Oak will share its code and data with the sector to allow other providers to build on or improve their own offerings with information from Oak if they so wish.
As an ALB, Oak will not create new resources. Rather, initially it has made £8 million available via an open procurement for primary and secondary maths, English, science, history, geography and music resources, providing investment into the market. As the Government say in their impact assessment, they plan to use Oak Academy to signpost to other high-quality commercial products.
To prevent further unfair advantage, the business case clearly states that Oak’s resources will be
“non-mandatory, and not endorsed by Ofsted”,
and that schools will be encouraged
“to continue using high quality commercial resources where this works best.”
So it is simply not the intention that teachers will solely rely on materials provided by Oak; rather, they will continue to draw on those that best suit their pupils and school context. I hope my noble friend the Minister can once again confirm that this is the case.
As we have heard, Oak was born out of the pandemic. Having spent taxpayers’ money on its creation and development so far, surely, rather than bin it, it must be right to make use of it where it adds value and supports hard-working teachers without distorting the commercial market. I believe that Oak is a positive development, but of course we have heard concerns and we will hear more today about its potential impact. I hope my noble friend the Minister can provide an assurance that, as Oak National Academy develops and expands its resource offering, the Government will continue closely to monitor its impact on commercial sectors and work with all parties to address any negative impacts, should they occur.
Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and thank him for bringing this to our attention. We should have had a longer and deeper debate on Oak National Academy before this point and the Government should have brought it before us, as this important initiative could change the education landscape. I agree with every word my noble friend Lord Knight said, and am probably going to say similar things—only not as well.
I want to make two points. The first is about the motivation for this. The impact assessment says that it wants to save teachers’ time and reduce the workload. One of the reasons given is that the 2014 national curriculum changes took away the framework of support for teachers, which now has to be replaced. That was eight years of things going wrong because of the inadequacy of the 2014 curriculum reforms and this is about trying to put that back in place.
What worries me most and what I just cannot get my head around is this. If you went to teachers and said, “We are the Government and we have millions of pounds; what do you most want us to do to take workload off your shoulders?”, none of them would say, “Give a pile of money to the Oak National Academy and let it produce off-the-shelf lesson plans and curriculum packages.” The irony is that the DfE and Ofsted have argued for this. If you asked teachers who they would most cite as putting pressure on them, they would say the DfE and Ofsted.
I just cannot think through the fact that we seem to be creating a system in which it is easier for teachers to use off-the-shelf lesson plans, as that would give them time to fill in returns for Ofsted and the DfE. I taught for 18 years and the thing I most wanted to do was a lesson plan. That is what I went into the job to do. It was my skill and my training. If teachers spend half an hour a day looking for information on the internet, then thank goodness; they are professionals. That is what they are meant to be doing. Why would you put in place something that meant that a science teacher or similar was not spending half an hour a day looking for up-to-date information on the internet? If the Government want to reduce workload, I suggest that they are going about it the wrong way.
I think this is about control. The evidence for that is in the impact statement. The summary asks why Oak was chosen. It could not be the DfE, because the teachers would not trust it. It could not be private sector procurement, because it would not be “aligned with government policy”. Think about that: the Government are not doing it themselves, because they know that teachers do not trust them, and they are not putting it out to tender, because they do not trust private sector publishers to align with government policy, so they have set up an arm’s-length body to—as the impact statement says time and again—align with government strategy. That is the giveaway.
I have a great deal of time for the person who runs Oak. He is a star. He is a young educationalist who I hope has more and more influence on our education system in years to come, but this has not done Oak any favours.
My second point is to reiterate the point that the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, made about the BBC. It is the reason; it is the whole rationale. If you need one argument against this, it is: use the BBC. I tried a digital curriculum from the BBC prior to this, and what we were going to do was wonderful. We lost in the courts and some people’s professional careers were damaged because of that. It would have been good, and it would have had all the accountability, visibility and openness that the BBC would have brought to the process. I justified that because it is a public sector broadcaster, but Oak has none of that: it is not a public sector broadcaster, it does not have a public sector remit and it does not have that accountability. There are a number of reasons why we should ask the Government to reconsider.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, I do not have any personal interests to declare in this discussion, as other noble Lords have—not that I use that to blame them for speaking about this, in any way. However, I happen to be a close personal friend of one of the people who was principally involved in establishing the Oak National Academy, who is probably the person my noble friend just referred to.
I learned about this during lockdown or, at least, in the periods during Covid when we could meet and talk about this. I was very impressed by what was being done to help education continue in this crisis. It was a noble endeavour and the academy should be fully congratulated on it. The tone of this debate does not recognise the contribution it made to keep education going when, I have to say, some—the education unions, for instance—were not very keen on going into classes. That point should be made.
Secondly, again for family reasons, I know all about the BBC thing and recognise that there are problems, but for goodness’ sake, this is a very small-scale public intervention. It is not the BBC. The tender is £8 million. Also, I have been told regarding Oak’s activities that there are two important differences from what the private sector offers. First, it is trying to have universal cover of all the subjects in the curriculum rather than just the ones out of which a lot of money can be made. That is an important difference that we should recognise. Secondly, use of its materials is heavily concentrated among schools that are teaching deprived kids. That does not surprise me, given the financial pressures on those schools and on their teachers, who deserve every possible help.
Therefore, I do not think that there is a problem with this. I do not understand why the publishers are trying to take Oak to court. I do not understand the point about this being an instrument of central government control, of a Tory Government who want to strangle the independence of the curriculum. This is an arm’s-length body. The definition of an arm’s-length body is one that is independent of ministerial control.
I recognise that these are industries of the future in which Britain has an important role to play, these being some of our competitive strengths in the world. However, what the education publishers are saying is like saying that you cannot have the NHS because it would stop all the investment in innovative medical activity. Let us be sensible about this. It needs a sensible conversation between the publishers and Oak National Academy.
Lord Strathcarron (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a publisher, although in this case the interest is purely theoretical as none of my publishing group’s imprints is in the academic market. I therefore have nothing to win or lose from any of Oak National Academy’s proposed activities.
However, I am a taxpayer and a publishing professional, and I know that publishing is an extremely marginal business in which even the most experienced and successful managers find it hard to make a profit. How the Civil Service is going to equal them is a complete mystery. Why they should even be trying to do so is an even bigger mystery, and why a Conservative Government are proposing to set up a state-owned and taxpayer-funded publishing operation in direct competition to private enterprise publishing companies is an even bigger mystery than that.
The headline figures are that the taxpayer should invest £43 million to hire 83 officials over the next three years. I would treat all three figures with a great degree of scepticism. Let us take the £43 million. A quick Google search will show that the average government contract goes over budget by 29%. Of course, we will not know until three years from now how Oak has fared, but as the budget was prepared using taxpayers’ imaginary money, with no accountability and to prove a business model, there is no reason to suggest that the £43 million will not conform to the national average and become £55 million.
Then we have the 83 officials. If anyone can wade through Oak’s 75-page acronym and jargon-laden business case, they will find that there are not 83 officials but 82.6 so-called full-time equivalents, so some poor soul is going to be 0.4 of himself or herself short. We then find that their main responsibility is procurement: £16 million-worth of material over the period. Anyone can do the maths; that is £193,000 per person. As these procurements break down into 12 lots, that is £16,000 per procurement item.
Bearing in mind the costs of those 82.6 people and their overheads, I have never come across a less efficient purchasing KPI. But they have nothing to worry about because, amazingly, nobody is in charge. We eventually find somebody called the senior responsible officer, but that role turns out to have two names to it followed by “job-share”, in brackets.
Lastly, we come to the three years. Unfortunately, my four minutes will soon be up so I can only ask: has anyone ever come across a government department, quango or arm’s-length body that voluntarily liquidated itself after three years, no matter how worthy that liquidation may have been? I fear that, unless we prevent it from starting, we will be stuck with Oak for ever.
This is an absolutely classic case of departmental overreach: an ill-conceived and unnecessary waste of taxpayers’ money, which can only undermine the private sector for no benefit to anyone, except the people who work for it. I urge all concerned to hand the programme back to publishing professionals who know what they are doing, are accountable for their success and failure and do it for a living.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, I have no interests to declare, except that I was extremely interested in the speech from the previous noble Lord. I have, from time to time as a teacher, of course, availed myself of textbooks and many other materials from the commercial education publishing sector. My brief intervention in this short debate, on which I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, is just to make a couple of points.
My first point is in relation to school funding. I understand that the current per capita funding for a secondary school pupil is about £6,000 per annum, which is not enough. As many of your Lordships know, schools are facing significant financial pressures and while the Minister will no doubt say that the Government are increasing funding, it remains too low. The fact that both the trade unions whose target audience is specifically heads and school leaders are either balloting for strike action or considering so doing is ample evidence for this.
I turn to the Oak academy. I have, as I have expressed previously, significant reservations about the Oak National Academy. My engagement with Jonathan Dando of the academy and my own perusal of the materials on offer, along with previous responses from the Minister—given, I have no doubt, in good faith—have done nothing to allay my concerns. I freely accept that the intervention of Oak academy materials during the pandemic played an important role in ensuring that distance learning could carry on, but that was of course supported heavily by the British Educational Suppliers Association and the Publishers Association—the figures have been previously given—to set Oak academy up in the first place.
However, the creation of Oak academy as an arm’s-length body, at a cost of £43 million to the taxpayer, is a different order of activity entirely. This £43 million will come from the DfE’s schools budget, which in my view is already too low. Yet research done by the British Educational Suppliers Association shows that only 5% of teachers polled by YouGov thought that centralised resources should be a priority, while 43% believed in funding schools so as to allow them to invest in materials that they thought worked best for them, and 36% believed that reducing class size would be a far better use of government money and would produce better outcomes for children and young people.
I think we all know that teacher workload is very high and burdensome, but it is not clear to me that the Oak academy materials, having spent time looking at them, would reduce workload—unless the Government intend to deprofessionalise teaching to a role of clicking play on a pre-recorded, one-size-fits-all, government-approved lesson. That is not an attractive proposition for a professional teacher, but it is in the same vein as the direction of travel for ITT referred to by my noble friend Lord Knight.
Of course, cost is a significant issue. The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, put it completely aptly when he said that it is hard to compete with free. There is a big concern that the Oak academy materials will be perceived as being, if not compulsory, certainly preferred. This perception is reinforced by the promotion of Oak academy materials by Amanda Spielman, His Majesty’s chief inspector, at a conference in April last year and by Ofsted’s strong presence on Oak’s subject expert panels, which, according to the Oak briefing for this debate,
“will advise and shape our curriculum”.
Notwithstanding that the briefing note also says,
“Our materials will always be optional with no expectation of use”,
I think that Ms Spielman’s intervention tells schools a very different story.
I do not need to make the case for education publishers; they are making it themselves. However, in closing, I want to ask the Minister what she makes of the report I have had from an experienced colleague that they have been offered an Amazon voucher to join an Oak expert panel. Is that an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money? This colleague will, I am sure, use that voucher to buy some books.
Baroness Hooper (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to have been allowed to make a brief intervention in the gap. I thank my noble friend Lord Vaizey for his introduction and the issues that he raised, with which I agree fully; indeed, I agree with most of what has been said in this debate, both in favour of Oak and what it has achieved as well as everything else. I declare my interest as the honorary president of BESA, the British Educational Suppliers Association, which represents the interests of many small and medium-sized businesses involved in edtech.
It seems to me that what is important is how children are taught and how well they are taught. To achieve the best possible results, it is also important that teachers are able to be creative and responsive to the needs of their pupils—as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, clearly was—and not bound by rigid, inflexible rules. However, in saying this, I appreciate that some teachers are more in need of support than others. My question for my noble friend the Minister is this: what provision is made in teacher training courses for digital awareness, including ways in which edtech can support and supplement their teaching skills?
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, we must thank the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, for drawing the issue to our attention. I do not think that half of us would have known that this was going on had it not been for a couple of the interventions he has made. It is probably a case for the use of Parliament.
This is a very odd one. Initially, I looked at the debate and said, “Yeah, online teaching—great. Wonderful. Online tools and technology—let’s use them”. I remind the Committee of my interests in those fields. However, I suddenly thought, “If the private sector is doing this, why are we intervening?” Is it because we are saving a lot of money? It does not really seem that the case for that has been made so let us hear it. Let us hear whether we are creating money to give extra resources to classrooms because that would be a case for it. If we are damaging one of our commercial sectors—there seems to be a well-argued fear, shall we say, that this could be happening—let us hear what the Government are going to do to mitigate that.
For instance, are we going to go to the publishing sector and say, “You have the contracts to make sure that the Oak academy is up to date”? If you want to make sure that something works, you have to keep monitoring it. Have we established that relationship? Is it going to happen? Are we going to make sure that we have some incentive for people to carry on writing new material that is relevant and keeps up to date with developments? Look at the textbooks from 10 years ago and take a field such as archaeology. We all know now that the hippies were turning up at the wrong time for their big party and that it should have been in mid-winter. This is because scientists and archaeologists have gone out there and had a look. So all those primary school projects got it wrong. How do we get in and make sure that things are happening? Maintenance is a big issue here. If that supplier and incentive have been removed, you may well damage the quality of education in the medium term.
Also, when it comes to supporting classrooms, a basic model may be acceptable but how on earth, with the variability of a classroom’s components, can a standard model ever be anything other than the briefest of guides? I have made it a mission of my own to mention special educational needs on every occasion until the Government tell us when that review will be published. January was the target; there is not much of that left. If you have a higher percentage than average in one class, you will need a different plan and, if it is different types of special educational need or there is one dominant pupil, you will need a different plan. If you have different levels of ability and interest in that class, you will need a different plan. You need variation; there is only so much benefit to be taken from that. I hope the Minister will take this opportunity to let us know exactly what the Government think they will get out of this.
When you have the free market being defended by the Labour and the Conservative Benches, and greater government control being spread around the House, something is wrong—or very right. Let us get an idea. The Government have to give us some answers on value for money and how they will refresh this. Will they give us some answers on both those points? I hope I can go away slightly more comfortable about the answer and the situation when we come back. Let us see.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey of Didcot, for securing this Question for Short Debate. I do not normally speak on education matters so I was pleased to see so many experts with much more knowledge than me in the Room to take part in the debate. I expressed my concern to a colleague outside the Grand Committee. They replied, “I don’t know what you’re worried about; it’s never stopped you speaking before.”
Turning to Oak National Academy, it is clear from today’s debate that it is not without controversy. My noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth was clear in his concerns that it could cause damage to the market, could cause huge difficulties and could have a detrimental effect. He set out a number of questions for the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, to answer; I am sure that she will address those when she responds to the debate. I would also appreciate it if she could set out what she envisages the relationship between Oak and Ofsted will be. If the former is setting the standard for what the modern curriculum and lesson planning should look like, will Ofsted be responsible for assessing its outputs?
The Institute for Government has called for proper evaluation and assurance of Oak since it has had only limited formal evaluation in the three years since its launch. Does the department intend to conduct an independent impact evaluation of Oak materials? Otherwise, how can stakeholders—teachers and the public —judge how well it is working, and how can we tackle issues that emerge? My noble friends Lady Morris of Yardley and Lady Blower made really important points about what teachers would want this money spent on if they were asked. They made it clear that it would not be what we have got here today. That is a fair point: what would the teachers want this money spent on? What do they need to make themselves more effective in the classroom?
Can the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, say something about the operational independence of Oak? That has certainly been a concern of many noble Lords in the course of this debate. I note that the chief executive of United Learning, Jon Coles, has pulled out of the initiative, citing concerns about its running and the direction of travel. The Minister may say something in her response about how Oak will remain optional. How can we ensure that it remains optional? If Jon Coles and others are pulling out, the risk, of course, is that other suppliers will be crowded out, choice will diminish and schools will end up effectively being forced to use Oak. Can the Minister tell the Grand Committee what the mechanism is to ensure that that does not happen and reassure noble Lords? I would also like to hear from the Minister about how any negative impact on publishers might be mitigated and how innovation might still be encouraged in education resources and the edtech space.
I recognise that Oak was a help to many during the lockdown and had a positive impact on teacher workloads. That was highly welcome. However, we also need the robust evaluation that I mentioned earlier. Given the potential impact on an important and valuable sector for our economy—edtech is worth £3.5 billion—I hope that the Government are exploring every option to assess Oak National Academy thoroughly and address any unintended consequences. I will leave it there.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Vaizey on securing time for this short debate. I am delighted to be exercising a pincer movement on him together with my noble friend Lady Evans, who is strategically placed at the other end of these Benches. I am also grateful to all noble Lords for their interest in Oak; I understand the strength of feeling in the Committee about protecting a thriving and competitive market for authors and publishers. I hope that, in the few minutes I have to speak, I can address those points as well as the absolutely critical reasons for our support for Oak, which the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, questioned.
There are many in the Committee who are far more expert and have done the real job of teaching but we all know that designing a high-quality, carefully sequenced curriculum is both complex and time-consuming and requires significant subject-specific expertise. We also know that many teachers develop their curriculum from scratch, with the average primary teacher searching online for resources for between one and three hours per week. All this adds to their workload; teacher workload is one of the greatest threats to teacher retention. We fundamentally believe that Oak can help with this. I am surprised that there has been less emphasis in this debate on the impact on teacher workload, given how strongly I know your Lordships feel about it.
We understand the concerns that Oak may negatively impact on the market. Our analysis suggests that that impact is likely to be low but we are taking steps to mitigate the risk, which I will go through, and will continue to monitor it; I say that in response to a number of questions, including from my noble friend Lord Vaizey. Ultimately, it is the public benefit Oak will provide that must be the Government’s priority. I will cover this.
My noble friend talked about Oak’s achievement in uniting the publishing sector—for the first time, I assume. I cannot comment on that but a greater achievement, as my noble friend Lady Evans pointed out, is that almost half of users save three hours a week on average in terms of their workload. I say in response to my noble friend Lord Strathcarron that Oak users are more likely to stay in the profession of education. In the scheme of things, in terms of spending taxpayers’ money and in the context of a budget of £58.8 billion in two years’ time, if our £43 million goes some way to keeping teachers in the profession—although it is not our primary aim—it will have been money spent incredibly well. On funding, which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, the IFS has confirmed that, in 2024-25, school funding will be the highest it has ever been in real terms; I hope she will bear that in mind.
My noble friend Lord Strathcarron made comments about handing back publishing to the professionals. In the case of schools, teachers are rightly creating their own content and their own curriculum. We believe that Oak will be an important catalyst in supporting them to do that even better than they do already.
As my noble friend Lady Evans pointed out, Oak was launched in April 2020 in response to the pandemic. During its busiest week, 2.5 million pupils used it. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for so eloquently recognising the contribution of Oak; I absolutely support and echo the sentiments that he expressed.
Despite what some noble Lords have suggested today, we believe that Oak has developed into a respected national resource and that evidence of the need for its continuation is strong. We know that, in the first six months of 2022, on average 32,000 teachers and 170,000 pupils used Oak resources every week. We now see how teachers benefit from the adaptability of the resources by using them in the way they see best, opting to use parts of the materials to enhance their lesson design rather than taking the off-the-shelf, tick-box approach that was unfairly described by some noble Lords. I remind your Lordships that only 1% of teachers are using Oak resources exclusively.
As your Lordships set out, in September 2022—my noble friend Lord Vaizey mentioned March; it was actually September—Oak was established as an arm’s-length body, which is strategically aligned with but, like every other arm’s-length body, operationally independent from the department. We took the decision to establish Oak after careful deliberation, including engaging the publishing and edtech sectors and an assessment of market impact, which my noble friend Lord Vaizey asked about. Your Lordships can review the full assessment of the business case, which was published in November and is available on GOV.UK. To repeat: we will absolutely keep a watching brief on developments in the market, along with the impact on competitors and on workload, teachers and, most important, pupils.
Oak will bring significant benefits for teachers by providing high-quality, adaptable and, I stress, optional support, reducing their workload and increasing curriculum planning expertise. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, gave us three options on why, because he argued that there are plenty of resources. I would not disagree. His first option was whether they were easier to find. The answer is yes. The second was whether it would drive quality. The answer is yes. The third was whether it was about control. The answer is no. It is absolutely not because, as he knows, it is up to every individual school and trust to choose what materials they use.
I encourage all noble Lords, as some clearly already have, to look at the procurement that is already going on and the engagement with teachers and professionals in the sector to ensure that the resources produced are as good as they can be. Also, a significant proportion of the £43 million set aside over the next three years to support Oak is expected to be provided to publishers, schools and other organisations for the creation of resources—I think to many of the organisations that some noble Lords have been concerned about today.
In November, Oak launched the procurement for resources in six priority subjects, which was worth £8.2 million. In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about mitigation, that offers the commercial market an opportunity to be involved in the creation of Oak’s new content.
On the issue of children with special educational needs and disabilities, which I know is very dear to all noble Lords’ hearts, and rightly so, the adaptability and accessibility of Oak’s resources provide a real opportunity to improve the quality of education for all pupils, including those with special educational needs and disabilities in mainstream schools. Oak will continue to provide more than 600 lessons supporting specialist teaching.
We know that teachers in the UK benefit from a diverse commercial market of educational resources. Oak aims to complement and stimulate this market, not to displace it. My noble friend Lord Vaizey described a sort of Stalinist economy, with no choice and no limits on what Oak can provide. I would like to set the record straight on both those things. I think that I have talked about choice already but, on limits, Oak’s activity will be restricted to key stages 1 to 4. There are several thriving sections of the market into which it will not enter, including the publication of textbooks, certified assessments and CPD. It will also not be pursuing domestic or international sales to schools, teachers, parents or pupils. It will not be producing phonics resources or key stage 5 resources.
Importantly, Oak is working collaboratively to develop its content. It will also signpost users to excellent curriculum offers available elsewhere—something which I think concerned the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy—so teachers will have more, not less, choice in deciding what is right for their pupils. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, suggested that teachers do not want Oak, which is a little unfair. Of the teachers surveyed, 93% of those who use Oak plan to continue using it in the current academic year.
My noble friend Lord Vaizey asked why there was no consultation on the establishment of the ALB. There is no duty to consult when establishing an ALB and, as he acknowledged, a market impact assessment was carried out and the department spoke to the market on several occasions. In response to the question from my noble friend about data protection, Oak will obviously be subject to all data protection duties.
I will write to noble Lords whose questions I did not reach, but I would like to finish by reminding your Lordships what Oak means for children and for teachers. Teachers surveyed in the impact evaluation of Oak said that it increased their confidence in curriculum design, increased the quality of their lesson planning, improved delivery and improved the quality of the school curriculum. Most importantly, Oak users were 35.3% more likely to report that above 20% of their pupils were exceeding expectations. That is what we want for our children, and why we are supporting Oak.