National Literacy Trust logo

Girl reading Oak lesson on tablet

Enrichment: mental health resources

Virtual Library Closure 

Our Virtual School Library has now closed

With 93% of teachers planning to use Oak National Academy beyond this school year[^1] we are delighted to confirm that Oak will continue to support teachers, schools and pupils for the long-term.

Oak’s resources remain free and available for you to use in and outside the classroom in preparation for the next academic year.

In March, the Secretary of State for Education announced [Oak will be established as a new, operationally independent, arms-length body of Government](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/education-secretary-promises-to-harness-energy-and-expertise-of-teachers "Read more on gov.uk"). Our role will be to support teachers in delivering excellent curriculum content and improving curriculum expertise.

With this news, we wanted to share a little more on the thinking behind this, and some early information on what the new body is going to do (although much is still to be confirmed).

## The need to support teachers with curriculum implementation

Designing and continuously improving a curriculum, and creating resources for lessons (often from scratch), is both time consuming and requires significant expertise.

Since the introduction of the more rigorous National Curriculum, the expectations on teachers here have only further increased. We know there is clear evidence that we can, and should, better support teachers in this area.

Just in the last few weeks, Teacher Tapp has found the majority of primary [teachers spend between one to five hours online each week looking for resources](https://teachertapp.co.uk/working-hours-world-book-day-and-the-ideal-gcse-course-length/ "Read more on Teacher Tapp's website"). 

Almost half of primary school teachers (46%) say they need to plan a lot of lessons from scratch and 30% do not have access to existing lesson plans. And research [in recent months from BESA](https://www.besa.org.uk/insights/resources-in-english-maintained-schools-2022/ "Read more on BESA's website") found that schools want more resources than they can afford.

Meanwhile, we’ve been delighted that teachers and schools have found the support from Oak National Academy in this area to be highly valuable.

Whilst many used our [teacher-created resources](https://teachers.thenational.academy/ "Teacher Hub") to support the response to the pandemic, this has now shifted to it being used to support lesson planning, in-class delivery and curriculum design. These are now the biggest use cases for teachers using Oak post pandemic with, on average, more than 40,000 teachers and 225,000 pupils using Oak each week in 2022.

Alongside assessing our usage data, we’ve placed significant focus on research and evaluation to make sure we’re making a positive impact and meeting teachers’ needs.

Last year ImpactEd completed an [independent evaluation of our work (pdf)](https://assets.ctfassets.net/ygggx3rcdvia/71qzpQA2MqlkvDs5OEDCv4/1d3ba8ab1743e40c167d6cdab3fc398c/Oak_Evaluation_Report_-_FINAL_Sept_2021.pdf "Read the full PDF report here"). Comparing Oak-user teachers to non-user teachers, it showed early signs that Oak had a positive impact on teacher workload and wellbeing. 

Most Oak users also stated that it improved their quality of teaching, both remotely and in-class, and increased their confidence in curriculum design. And in their latest research from February 2022, Teacher Tapp found 79% of Oak’s users recommend it.

## What will we do in the future?

From this solid foundation, we want to do more.

Guided by the National Curriculum, we’ll work with a diverse range of teachers, schools, bodies and experts from across the sector to facilitate the development of curriculum maps and thousands of downloadable lessons and digital resources.

These will all be freely available to teachers and children and will support a whole variety of use cases.

We will continue our focus on making sure the most disadvantaged children can benefit and be supported, given those from the poorest backgrounds have suffered most during the pandemic.

We’ll [continue to support students with SEND](https://teachers.thenational.academy/specialist "Explore our SEND lessons"), and offer materials and lessons that stretch pupils beyond the National Curriculum too.

The resources and curricula will be totally optional, fully adaptable and have a range of choices and approaches for teachers to pick from.

Teachers know their pupils best so will be free to use whatever fits in with their existing approach, take inspiration from evidence-based examples, or edit and adapt them to meet their needs.

Ofsted will not mandate the curriculum maps and materials, and they will not be 'pre-approved' in any way. If our products and support are not helpful to a particular school’s context, they can and should entirely ignore us!

Oak’s success to date has been grounded in our ‘by teachers, for teachers’ approach. Over 500 teachers from 50 schools and partners came together to create our existing resources.

This open, collaborative approach will be even more important going forward. As we become a national body, we want to gather and reflect views from across the sector.

We are committed to bringing together expertise from across the sector to develop and agree our approach in an open process. And we will involve thousands of teachers up and down the country in the planning, testing and ongoing improvement of our work.

We are also committed to sharing what we learn, supporting the development of strong subject communities and facilitating the ongoing development of curriculum expertise.

We hope all of this means we can support teachers so they can spend more time focused on directly supporting their pupils.

## Next steps 

As Oak moves into its next phase, we’re particularly grateful to the [Reach Foundation](https://www.reach-c2c.org/ "Visit the Reach Foundation's website"), who have incubated us to date, and have agreed to transfer all of Oak’s assets, including our platform and data, to the arms-length body.

As you can imagine, there are many more details still to confirm. In the coming weeks and months I hope we can engage with as many of you as possible to shape these, so the new body truly supports pupils and teachers. We’ll share more news as soon as possible.

Lastly, thank-you again for all the support you and our incredible partners have given Oak since we launched. It's been a privilege to play a small role in the incredible efforts of the education community over the last two challenging years.

[^1]: *93% of teachers currently using Oak*

Be among the first to get free lessons, resources and other helpful content by email. Unsubscribe at any time. [Read our privacy policy](/privacy-policy "Privacy Policy").

Sign up for email

Join our community

Following recent announcements, we wanted to share a little more information on what the new body is going to do.

Matt Hood

Oak’s future: Continuing to support teachers and pupils

Mia O’Gorman, Science Teacher at Hammersmith Academy, spoke to us about how using Oak National Academy to support revision has been beneficial for both pupils and teachers.

Like so many teachers, Mia and her colleagues have been helping their pupils with exam preparation. With many students having isolated or falling sick themselves, there’s been inevitable disruption to their learning - which is now making their revision planning across the three science topics more challenging.

As Mia says: “For GCSE science, students do six papers so it can get a little bit overwhelming for them to try and map their revision because they might have missed topics when they were isolating.”

To help her students figure out themselves what they need to relearn and what they need to revise, Mia has used Oak’s lessons to create a simple but highly organised ‘independent learning pack’ which has been shared with her pupils over the school’s learning platform.

## Oak’s sequence of lessons provide ready-made revision resources

Mia explains: “We say to students that we obviously know there's been a little bit of lost learning and here we’ve brought all these amazing resources together for you so that once we've helped you identify these gaps in your knowledge, you've got this resource to go away and revise or relearn whatever you need.”

The learning pack consists of all of the relevant Oak quizzes, lessons and resources that align to the chemistry, biology and physics GCSE papers. Mia also includes links to other resources in her pack - and links to past exam papers.

Mia explains: “Now we've had advanced information from the exam boards on what’s to be covered, it’s been really easy to update the pack and let students know topics that are going to be a main focus.”

## Oak quizzes are a great way to identify gaps in knowledge

For each of the topics, Mia has linked to Oak’s quizzes. Before students start revising each topic, Mia directs them to take the quiz so they can identify their level of learning - and from there they decide whether they need to relearn the topic or just revise.

Mia says: “We find the unit quizzes really useful especially to pinpoint whether there’s a need to catch up on lost learning or to just revise. For example, if a pupil gets less than 20% on a unit quiz, you know that’s a unit they need to relearn.

“If a student does better on a unit quiz, then we tell them to watch the review lessons.

## Using Oak has reduced workload

Thinking about how Oak helps with her workload, Mia says: “Oak’s helped us with our planning at a time when there's been so many other things that have taken priority.

“We've been showing the pack at the start of every lesson and just reminding students it exists. It's constantly available on SatchelOne as homework, so they've always got access.

“And we just hammer the availability of the resource home in every lesson - whenever they ask us a question I ask, have you been on the independent learning pack?”

---

## Don’t spend hours creating revision plans from scratch

Take inspiration from Mia and check out our [new revision pages](https://www.thenational.academy/gcse-and-sats-preparation "View our pages"), or head straight to [Teacher Hub](https://teachers.thenational.academy/ "Go to Teacher Hub") to get started.

Find out more about how using Oak to support revision has been beneficial for both pupils and teachers at Hammersmith Academy from science teacher, Mia O’Gorman.

Rachel Strom

How using Oak for revision has helped personalise revision plans for pupils and reduce workload for teachers

Children’s Mental Health Week returns for 2022 from 7th-13th February, with the theme of ‘Growing Together’. 

We’re really proud to be supporting the incredible charities [Place2Be](https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk "Place2Be") and [BAFTA Kids](https://www.baftakids.org/ "BAFTA Kids") to bring you a [free assembly](https://classroom.thenational.academy/assemblies "Oak assemblies") at 8am on Monday 7th February. This year we’ll be hosting two versions: one for primary pupils, and one for secondary pupils.

The primary assembly features special guests Lindsey Russell from *Blue Peter* and Oti Mabuse from *Strictly Come Dancing*. Television presenter Emma Willis and actors Kia Pegg and Kit Young will be joining the secondary assembly.


Join the Children’s Mental Health Week assembly 2022

Children's mental health week assemblies 2022

Children's Mental Health Week 2022

CMHW assemblies 2022

### Check out the work of our partner Place2Be

The virtual assemblies kick off a week of activities and events to shine a spotlight on the importance of children and young people’s mental health. [Place2Be](https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk/ "Place2Be"), which does incredible work all year round, has created some wonderful resources to help families and schools take part.

During Children’s Mental Health Week, Place2Be is encouraging everyone across the UK to get involved through a series of activities, including: an interactive map of events across the country, a dress up day ‘Dress to Express’ to encourage children to express their personality, free school learning resources and a social media campaign on the theme of Growing Together. For more information, head to [childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk](https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk "Childrens Mental Health Week ")

### An exciting opportunity from our friends at BAFTA Kids

During the assembly, BAFTA Kids will also be launching their annual Young Presenter Competition, which aims to find exciting new on-screen talent aged between 10-18 years, encouraging young people’s self-esteem and confidence.

Previous winners of the competition have gone on to host at BAFTA red-carpets and events throughout the year, so tune in to the assembly to find out how budding presenters can enter. More information is available on the [BAFTA website](http://www.baftakids.org/competitions "BAFTA Kids competition ").
