A journalist asked me yesterday about the Ofsted involvement with Oak National Academy. Before I returned her call, I tried to order my thoughts a little. This is a complex space and the following thoughts occured to me...
Le Courbusier said that a house was a, "Thing for living in". It is defined by its function not its attributes or contents. A school is a thing for learning in. A good school is one in which we all learn well. This depends on lots of things. But on nothing more than on good teaching.
Oak National Academy is a collection of schemes of work. Schools often use schemes to scaffold, when teacher quality or subject knowledge is less than desired. But, like any scheme of work, it is no substitute for or guarantee of good quality teaching.
Governments are often frustrated by the cost and time required to improve the quality of teaching. But a grail quest for the perfect text book helps no-one, because the perfect text book doesn't exist. There are no shortcuts to deep subject knowledge and acquired classroom craft. Neither of which is improved by a scheme of work, however good or well intentioned.
Oak National Academy is concerning only if it is the thin end of a wedge. It could be seen as the beginning of a national scheme of work. This might herald a new era of performative compliance. Whether you see it as such or not, probably depends on your existing political and professional bias.
Does Oak National Academy in and of itself improve the quality of teaching? I don't know. There is sometimes a danger that overly scaffolded schemes of work impair rather than improve teacher development. Becuase they do not, in and of themselves, enforce the reflection necessary to deepen teacher subject knowledge and craft. But I suppose we'll have to wait and see.
It is a tool and its success depends entirely on those who wield it, and the intent with which it is used.
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