PA and trade bodies urge rethink on plans for arm's-length curriculum body

The Publishers Association (PA) has joined five other trade bodies in writing to new education secretary James Cleverly, asking him to reconsider the department’s “radical plans” for an arm’s-length future curriculum body, “due to a lack of evidence and of due scrutiny, exacerbated by current political uncertainty”. 

The Oak National Academy is an online classroom platform, created in April 2020 by charity the Reach Foundation as a response to the coronavirus outbreak. It has 40,000 resources and provided nearly 3,500 hours of video lesson content during the pandemic. 

Earlier this year, the former education secretary Nadhim Zahawi announced it will be converted into an entirely new Arm’s Length Body to the Department for Education (DfE) by this autumn. Arm’s Length Bodies, or ALBs, are public sector organisations which run at varying degrees of independence from the government. The new ALB’s first products are expected to be made available to teachers in September 2023. 

The PA criticised the decision at the time, claiming it would hit educational publishers and “ultimately damage teacher choice and student outcomes”, asking the government to work with the sector when developing the next phase. 

Now the PA has co-ordinated with the Society of Authors, the British Educational Suppliers Association, The Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society, Publishers’ Licensing Services and The Copyright Licensing Agency to ask the new education secretary to suspend the creation of the ALB, claiming “all the current evidence indicates that the department is pursuing a major market intervention into the school resources market which teachers neither want nor need”. 

The letter, seen by The Bookseller, says “the creation of a new ALB should be a policy of last resort and there has been no assessment of need or projected future impact on either the commercial market or teacher choice”. 

It continues: “We wholeheartedly support the department’s desire to stimulate the development of curriculum expertise for teachers and to support them in accelerating education recovery. However, ALBs are an expensive use of already strained public money. They also remove responsibility from ministers, handing it to unelected officials and thus reducing accountability. We assert that this process has not been thought through and comes with a significant amount of risk politically and to the wider school system.” 

The signatories have asked the government to “pause these proposals and resultant procurement processes in order to properly consult with stakeholders, to assess need, and to find an end point which achieves a more proportionate and sustainable future for Oak National Academy’s assets, while allowing the flourishing and competitive education resources market to continue to offer choice in quality resources for schools” adding “we believe this compromise is possible with engagement and dialogue”. 

Dan Conway, the PA’s new c.e.o., told The Bookseller: "The Publishers Association and our members have been making the case to the DfE for months that the current plans for the curriculum body will drastically reduce teacher autonomy and choice over the resources they use in the long term. Our members strongly supported the setting up of the Oak National Academy during a period of unprecedented strain on teachers during the pandemic and we want to see it find a new sustainable footing, but trying to turn it into a one-sized-fits-all state publisher isn’t the right way to do that. It will unfairly drive out the existing resources on the market. There are lots of other options available to the DfE, including using the new curriculum body to target curriculum support at those who need it most, and we sincerely hope the new secretary of state will explore those properly."