Oak Academy to address weaknesses in curriculum design and delivery

The Department for Education has published the business case it made to the Cabinet Office and Treasury to turn the Oak National Academy into an arms-length curriculum body.

The business case says that rationale for intervention is to address two main problems in education - curriculum design and delivery and excessive teacher workload associated with curriculum planning.

The report points out that in 2014, Ofsted reported serious concerns with the quality of curriculum design in schools and concluded that there are “a number of deficiencies in curriculum thinking” and “limited evidence of a thoughtful approach to curriculum”.

In response to these findings, Ofsted introduced a new focus on curriculum as a central part of its changes to the Education Inspection Framework. Introduced in 2019, this framework effectively increased school accountability for curriculum design
and delivery. But the business case said that "the new 2014 National Curriculum has been implemented by teachers with comparatively little practical guidance. Overall, this has meant that since 2014, schools have needed to teach a more rigorous and academically challenging curriculum, but with more autonomy and less support than they have been used to."

The report also says that evidence suggests that many teachers struggle to find quality resources and end up having to create their lessons from scratch.

The report says: “Without government intervention, this business cases concludes it is unlikely that this cycle will be broken quickly enough, and the standard of curriculum design and implementation may well remain too low to achieve our wider aims for education recovery and levelling up.”