ARTICLE: Decisions on ‘most important knowledge’ at the MESO site of curriculum making activity. (4/5)
This is the fourth in a series of articles in response to the recently published final report of the DfE Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR). Article 1 provides context, including a key explainer of ‘the sites of curriculum making activity’. Article 2 looks at what happened at the upper macro site. Article 3 looks at the lower macro site of curriculum making and how climate change and sustainability will be written into the national curriculum by DfE commissioned writers. In this article, the meso site of curriculum making is explored, with a specific look at a special case: Oak National Academy.
Article 4: Decisions on ‘most important knowledge’ at the meso site of curriculum making activity
OK, so we need to talk about Oak National Academy. There are concerns in the education sector that Oak is becoming too dominant a player at the meso site of curriculum making activity. It is important that these concerns are properly addressed, I will touch on them in the second section of this article, but first some background:
Oak National Academy was founded in 2020 as a Covid-19 lockdown solution for teachers and parents who were suddenly tasked with needing to keep children learning when their schools were shut. It was set up by teachers, for teachers, in a genuinely grassroots and organic way; it was a beautiful sprouting acorn. Very quickly, however, Oak secured a mighty £4.3 million from the DfE to provide lessons for the 2020/21 academic year. The resources and online lessons provided by this very fast growing Oak helped tens of thousands of young people through that unimaginably difficult time of their lives.
In 2022, Oak National Academy became an independent public body. It is financially sponsored by the Government, via the DfE, which describes it as follows:
The Oak National Academy is strategically aligned with but operationally independent from the Department for Education. It works with teachers across the country, giving them and their pupils access to high-quality digital curriculum resources which are free, optional, and adaptable.
Oak National Academy is an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Education.
A lot of schools and a lot of teachers use Oak’s services. Year-on-year, the number of users continues to increase. According to Schools Week, the ‘latest usage data shows Oak was used by 182,775 teachers between July 2024 and February 2025.’ This represents a 200%+ increase compared to the same period the year before.
Concerns about Oak National Academy
Oak National Academy has been controversial since the start. A judicial review was launched in 2023 by The British Educational Suppliers Association and the Publishers Association, and then paused in 2024. In 2025, DfE commissioned an independent review and market impact assessment, this failed to ease concerns and has resulted in the relaunch of the judicial review, which is once again live.
Legal action is being taken because The British Educational Suppliers Association, the Publishers Association and others, claim that Oak National Academy “poses an existential risk to the future viability of the sector, which in its current form, will result in an erosion of teacher choice over how to deliver the national curriculum” and that Oak is in receipt of what amounts to an “unlawful state subsidy”.
Oak is clearly very close to DfE, and the CAR panel included several people with current or recent links to it. The final report of the CAR mentions Oak National Academy nine times, making statements such as:
We also note the value of further exemplifying the effective teaching of financial literacy, through resources such as those created by Oak National Academy. (p. 36)
And
Bodies such as Oak National Academy may be able to support teachers in this area by providing teachers with resources, progression scaffolds and exemplification of good practice. (p. 53)
Oak at the meso site of curriculum activity
If Oak National Academy survives the judicial review, its influence over what is deemed ‘most important’ once we reach the meso site of curriculum making activity will be significant and this is critical. I’ll go back to the example of geography at key stage 4 (see article 3) to illustrate why:
Let’s assume that the following RMetS recommended statement does make it into the national curriculum in full:
Social, cultural, religious, economic and political determinants of climate action in the local, national and global community.
Oak National Academy, or indeed any other education resource provider, will digest this statement, research around it and then create resources, activities, and lesson plans to help learners to explore the ‘determinants of climate action’.
Through the resources Oak produce they will likely – implicitly or explicitly – suggest what some of these determinants are. They will do this to encourage learners to examine them and form an opinion on which ones are (and aren’t) the most important.
In creating this list of suggestions, Oak will be choosing carefully. Some determinants will appear, while others may not – Oak will be making decisions on which are (and aren’t) the most important elements for learners should know about this most important aspect of the wider, most important, topic of climate change and sustainability.
Advocacy and Practivism at the meso site of curriculum making activity?
So, what are CCSE campaigners to do at the meso site? Well, if Oak’s dominance of what was once a thriving marketplace continues to grow, the only thing, perhaps, to do is to try and build a relationship with their relevant subject expert groups and curriculum leads. That’s not quite the only option however, two others exist:
Firstly, some academy chains decline to use Oak National Academy, there are therefore other providers to reach out to, and to influence. We must therefore develop those relationships and offer support and advice on what’s most important in relation to every national curriculum flagged aspect of the topic covered.
Secondly, there is nothing stopping an NGO, business, or individual from creating their own teaching and learning resources on the ‘determinants of climate action’ and every other aspect of climate change and sustainability that makes it into the national curriculum. We can be active at the meso site – as a curriculum maker. This is a form of ‘Practivism’, a way to demonstrate your interpretation of what is most important.
You can create resources that meet national curriculum requirements but differ from resources created by Oak and the other large education providers. In marketing your resources to teachers*, you can point out how your resources are different to what is on offer elsewhere.
The meso site of curriculum making activity is critical, perhaps the most critical. However, as teachers, campaigners, NGOs, and curriculum makers we can be influential at two further sites, the micro and the nano.
Read on…
The next and final article takes us into the education setting itself.
Footnote
*It is neither cheap, nor easy to market resources to schools and teachers; and it is a very crowded marketplace. Resources can, however, cut through. It is important to connect with the DfE Sustainability for Schools Hub and other ‘one stop shops’ and platforms. As a campaigning organisation resources are important as examples of what good looks like and worth producing for that reason alone - make them to put them in the hands of other more powerful curriculum makers; and let them rip you off.