So here’s how I suggest we should now be thinking about Oak:
- Forget about the acorn. Oak is no longer the organisation it was in its first year. When Oak was first dreamt up, it was a hastily pulled together Covid response with a charmingly Challenge Anneka feel to it. Its first iteration was put together with £500,000 of startup funding. But now it has £43m over 3 years, plus a recently announced additional £2m to develop AI tools, and that just makes it a fundamentally different organisation, albeit with key leaders still in place. To be clear, I don’t think this is a good or bad thing; I just think it’s important to assess what Oak is up to now through a different lens from the original incarnation. So let’s consign “Old Oak” (or surely: Acorn) to history, and turn our attention to “New Oak”.
- Oak is neither independent nor free. Oak describes itself as “an independent public body”. This has been a source of irritation to some, who make the point that the Oak’s articles of association describe a sole member, and that member is the Secretary of State for Education. There are some protections and operational realities that I imagine make it feel more independent than other parts of government - the Reach Foundation is still a “Guardian Member”, and the framework agreement does say “DfE shall not prescribe or approve the content of curriculum packages or educational resources” - but that’s not the same as being constitutionally independent. I’m also not sure that “free” is the right lens through which to view them either. Of course it’s correct that teachers can use their resources without paying, but £43m over 3 years equates to around £700 per English state school per year. Now, if the resources are high quality and widely used that may prove to be great value - but it’s not a trivial amount of money.
- It’s annoying when you own a business and the government competes with you… but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Oak’s existence means that the government is effectively now both a publisher and a provider of education resources and technology. So if you too are a publisher or provider of education technology, that could feel jolly annoying!
Now, I must declare an interest here, in that I’m co-founder of two edtech businesses that are at the very least adjacent to Oak, and we partner with education publishers who are at least somewhat in competition with Oak. So clearly I am a candidate to be annoyed by Oak. But honestly, I’ve never really objected to their existence philosophically. I guess I see government intervention as conceptually legitimate in a taxpayer-funded sector. That doesn’t mean I usually think that government intervention will be a good use of taxpayer money; but in principle I’m ok with the government being a bit interventionist if they see a reason to do so. The Teaching Vacancies Service is a good case in point: I guess if you’re TES you’d rather the government stayed out of this part of the market, but as a taxpayer I’m fine with the government weighing in here. The way I see it is that it’s down to the sector to innovate and differentiate in response. Instead of being angry at government intervention, I’d prefer to focus on being different and/or better.
That said, Oak doesn’t get a permanent free pass to expand however it wants. Trade associations (most notably BESA and the Publishers’ Association) have been understandably upset at Oak, for example for allowing their content to be made available for free globally. I have some sympathy here too: while technically I can’t quite see how geo-blocking could have worked in practice, it clearly wasn’t the government’s intention to undermine the thriving UK curriculum export market when they decided to back Oak. And yet, that may be exactly what happens once their resources are freely available everywhere. So we should all keep an eye out for overreach, and call it out when it happens.
- The above points don’t have much bearing on whether “New Oak” will be good. Now, a lot of the public debate I’ve seen about Oak has dwelt on points 1-3 above. I think they’re interesting, but honestly not that important for how we see the future of Oak. We all come from somewhere, but that doesn’t define our future; Arms Length Bodies (which is what Oak is) can do good things without being independent; and services that disrupt sectors can still be good, even if they annoy incumbents. So I’d prefer to focus on other points when thinking about Oak. On which note…
- Oak is optional. One common complaint about Oak is that it will become a de facto national curriculum with implicit Ofsted backing, given the organisation’s subject advisory role. Oak refute this narrative strongly - they describe themselves as “entirely optional” in their 3 year strategy document. Still, I don’t think it’s silly to worry about Oak being somehow imposed on schools - and no doubt there will be some who feel pressure to use Oak resources as a “safe” option compared to doing your own thing.
But our education sector has a rich tapestry of heads, MAT leaders, LA staff and teachers, who all get a say in what a school’s curriculum looks like. I just can’t imagine any world in which this complex, ideologically diverse sector comes to a shared agreement that Oak is the clear gold standard in all subjects. Instead, I see it as a bit like the quest for a “winning” standard in many parts of the technology world - and that usually ends up this way.
We can even see some evidence for how some will steer clear of Oak from the reaction of United Learning (UL), which has set up its own paid-for alternative. The UL CEO Jon Coles has been pretty forthright in his disapproval for New Oak, and I think this shows clearly that MAT CEOs aren’t just going to roll over and accept the imposition of a fully resourced national curriculum.
- It’s too early to decide how good New Oak will be. It’s important to remind ourselves that Oak is rewriting everything right now, so basically none of us knows how good their stuff will be across the board. (There are 17 early release units on their website at the time of writing, and the early comments I’ve seen about those are positive, but so far it’s a very small sample size.) I also think it’s a stretch to expect all Oak’s resources to be equally good - their procurement process means that a wide range of curriculum partners are right now beavering away to produce New Oak’s new materials. I’d be surprised if some of these aren’t seen as good given the number of credible organisations involved; and I’d be equally surprised if there aren’t holes to be picked.
Another factor here is that public procurement is a somewhat untested way to develop this kind of product. While I’d expect Oak to have careful Quality Assurance processes, it’s just a big undertaking to generate content in this way. So let’s not jump to too many conclusions before we’ve had a chance to see their new stuff. And certainly, let’s not judge them because of whatever preconceptions we might have.
- But we do know that Oak’s tech is good (and limited). One reason I remain optimistic about Oak is that they’ve played a blinder with their tech. The reputation of government-funded technology is, shall we say, not great; and yet from day 1 Oak have made a bunch of really smart decisions that mean they have a fast, intuitive, and (crucially) limited tech product. I would describe Oak as a Lesson Delivery Platform (and I think they’d call it something similar too). It’s certainly not a full Learning Platform - the system doesn’t contain student details, for example - and I see no evidence that they’re likely to change this approach. That leaves space for the education technology sector to do things that Oak aren’t attempting, while Oak ensures that its resources are quick and easy to access. You can even use their code if you want, as it’s all available with an MIT open source license.
My eyebrows were raised somewhat by the government passing them £2m to spend on AI tooling - if the government wants to intervene here, personally I’d have preferred to see a public competition to solicit innovations in the field of AI. One of my ventures, Carousel Learning, got its first £75k of seed funding from a highly competitive COVID-response funding round run by Innovate UK, and we’ve grown to work with over 2,000 schools without any other public support - so you really shouldn’t underestimate what the UK edtech scene can achieve with a bit of government support. That said, my understanding is that alongside their own AI-powered products, Oak is also looking to index and make their curriculum content usable by third party products as a reliable education foundation for AI models. If that’s the case, it has potential to be useful; if they go much beyond that remit, well, I guess that could be a sign of overreach. But we’re not there yet.
- Oak should be at most a set of foundations; not the whole building. Essentially then, I think New Oak will be a slick but minimal technology stack containing good-but-not-perfect content. No doubt some schools will use their resources extensively; but I imagine more will dip in and out. Oak will be used for cover; for future unexpected periods of remote learning; and as a reference point when developing, refining and filling gaps in a school’s existing curriculum offer. Teachers will still want to produce their own booklets and slides, and they will no doubt remain keen to buy in innovative non-Oak curriculum materials.
To put it another way, my hope for Oak is that it becomes a minimum baseline for acceptable curriculum quality. Schools and curriculum providers will be free to take different approaches, but content creators will need to be able to explain how their stuff is better than Oak. And honestly, if you’re worried about Oak becoming the sole national curriculum, I think you’re being way too pessimistic about the ingenuity and independent-mindedness of our sector. No government edict is going to make two English teachers tackle An Inspector Calls in the same way. Rather, I think the process of teachers producing high quality stuff will be considerably easier once Oak exists as a reference point. Which leads me on to my last point…
- Oak had to be free! My biggest concern about Oak was that there would be limitations on the use and reuse of their materials. I blogged about this last year, and I continue to be firmly of the belief that the only “good” Oak is a free Oak. Curriculum isn’t the kind of thing where you can produce something, publish it and use it forever more without any changes. Every year we evolve our understanding of how to teach, how technology can help with that teaching process, and what knowledge and teaching techniques will lead to the best outcomes in terms of student learning. So to make the most of Oak we need everyone - including edtech vendors and curriculum providers - to be able to reference, reuse and ultimately improve Oak. It would have been awful if we spent £43m creating all this content, and then didn’t allow every part of the sector to play a part in maximising Oak’s potential. It was brave of Oak (and no doubt complicated in terms of licensing arrangements) to agree to an open license, and now they’ve done so, we can all think about how we make the most of their existence. It’s also not just a national initiative - I’m not aware of any publicly funded and fully resources open curriculum anywhere else in the world. So if you work in a school or an edtech venture, whether you like it or not you’re now part of this experiment.
