Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is their policy in relation to competing with the educational publishing sector in the provision of curriculum content; and whether they plan for the Oak National Academy to be sold or broken up in the near future.

The Government has allocated up to £43 million for the Oak National Academy over the 2022/23 to 2024/25 financial years. This figure relates specifically to direct funding to Oak as an Arm’s Length Body. This figure does not include grant funding in previous years to the Reach Foundation, which incubated Oak. A significant proportion of Oak’s funding will go to schools, publishers and other organisations for the creation of resources.

Value for money was an important factor in the appraisal of options in the creation of Oak as an Arm’s Length Body, and in the design of Oak’s lean operating model, as set out in the published full business case, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/oak-national-academy-business-case.

Oak will provide value for money, benefitting schools and pupils by tackling teacher workload, improving curriculum expertise and increasing standards of education.

The Department knows 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. In a recent survey, none of Oak’s surveyed users said they were using Oak resources exclusively. Oak will provide teachers with access to high quality, evidence based resources that are free, optional and adaptable. This will give teachers more choice in deciding what’s right for their pupils, thereby stimulating teacher demand for high quality digital resources.

There is no plan for Oak to be sold or broken up.