Oak National Academy
By Sam Booth; Design and Technology Subject Lead Oak National Academy
It’s been an exciting few months at Oak National Academy as we’ve taken our first big step towards creating our new design and technology curriculum and all-new teaching resources made for you to use in the classroom.
Why are we making new resources? The resources we made during the pandemic were designed for remote teaching. While tens of thousands of teachers continue to use them each week for planning, we knew there were improvements we could make.
This year we’ve released new resources for English, history, maths, science and primary geography. By the end of next year, we’ll have released new plans and resources for all national curriculum subjects.
Our new D&T curriculum partners
Our new curriculum partners are the Design & Technology Association, supported by the British Nutrition Foundation.
I’m delighted to have both partners working with us with the aim of reducing teachers’ workload by sharing high-quality, adaptable resources that give them a solid starting point for their lesson and curriculum planning.
I think it’s important to point out that, as ever, using Oak is totally optional. As Tom Rose, Education Director at Oak, said: “Teachers, as always, will have full choice in whether to use Oak’s optional curriculum and teaching resources. Teachers using them only if they meet their needs, and adapting using their professional judgement, are central to our stance. Teachers, too, will decide how lessons are delivered. Oak’s new teaching resources will not be a finished lesson, as only teachers can plan how to use them, and how to design and deliver their lessons in the context of their school and pupils. We’ll actively encourage teachers to consider different methods.”
Involving teachers and experts
Each of our partners has been busy building their expert teams to help shape our curriculum. The Design & Technology Association has welcomed the addition of Secondary D&T Curriculum Design Lead (CDL) Joanne Taylor. Joanne has 24 years of experience as a teacher and leader of D&T in secondary schools, she is now working as a consultant while studying for her PhD. Richard Brown has also joined as Primary D&T CDL. Rich is an experienced practitioner who has taught in primary schools across the key stages and is soon to start his D&T-focused PhD at the University of Cambridge whilst developing his consultancy dtlearn.co.uk. Both will be supported by the Association's Director of Education, Ryan Ball.
The British Nutrition Foundation has welcomed back Roy Ballam as Primary and Secondary CDL for cooking and nutrition. Roy is an experienced school food education consultant, having left the British Nutrition Foundation as Managing Director and Head of Education. He is a former food teacher and A-level examiner. Roy will be, supported by Frances Meek, the Foundation's Education Services Manager.
Over the coming months, our partners will develop their curricula with the support of our expert groups and brilliant teachers who will make the resources. Details of the group will be shared shortly. We have also hired our first subject and pedagogy reviewer, Selina Chadwick, who brings a wealth of knowledge to the team. Working with our experts, teaching resource creators and reviewers, our curriculum and resources will continue to be developed in line with our curriculum principles and approach. These lay the foundation for quality and coherence while giving teachers flexibility.
Our current focus
We have already begun deep and meaningful discussions around curriculum design, developing our curriculum ‘threads’ as we call them, which describe the links to achieve coherence in our subject. Our threads and vision help teachers better understand the curriculum as a body of knowledge. We are also in the final stages of deciding the units of learning, looking carefully at sequencing and coherence across both phases.
Our first set of new lesson planning and teaching resources will be available from autumn 2024, with full curriculum packages by autumn 2025.
Want to get involved?
There are many ways you can stay up to date and get involved to help shape our design and technology curriculum:
Feedback is really important to us. As teachers, we know we can always keep improving. We're working with subject expert groups to get valuable input at the moment, but we know it's vital these resources work for teachers in the classroom. We'll, therefore, have opportunities for teachers to test the resources in the near future. To register your interest in doing so, please visit our form.
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I’ll also be speaking at the Big D&T meet in July, where I will run a workshop outlining how we plan our design & technology curriculum and share how our resources can save teachers precious time with lesson planning. If you’re interested in attending, registration is now open.
