Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if her Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of converting the Oak National Academy to an arms-length body producing publicly-funded material to support the curriculum.

Oak National Academy is continuing to work with teachers across the country, giving them and their pupils access to high quality digital curriculum resources which are free, optional and adaptable. Oak is helping to tackle longstanding challenges, such as teacher workload, a significant driver of retention issues in the sector.

Over 30,000 teachers continue to use Oak each week. A significant proportion of the £43 million set aside to support Oak is expected to be provided directly to schools, publishers, and other organisations for the creation of resources. As an integral part of the process to set up Oak as an arm’s length body, the Department produced a business case, which included an assessment of potential market impact. This business case was published on GOV.UK, and can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/oak-national-academy-business-case.

Where Oak needs to use existing third party content, such as texts, Oak will seek to have an overarching licence with relevant licensing bodies wherever feasible so the copyright holder receives full payment for their work.

Oak’s future and operating model was discussed with teachers and others in the sector in multiple forums. Ministers held roundtable discussions with teachers and school leaders from a range of schools and multi academy trusts. The Department held a series of public webinars for teachers, school leaders and sector bodies. Plans for Oak’s future have also been discussed with teacher representatives, including school leaders and unions, and teacher viewpoints have been collected through surveys.