A decision by Oak National Academy to roll back plans to geoblock its resources to users outside the UK has been met with fury by edtech leaders, who slammed the move as “riding roughshod” over teacher and publisher views.
The government-owned teaching resource platform said last November that it would only share its full curriculum packages on a domestic licence, so “any UK school or organisation can use and adapt them for non-commercial use”.
But today, Oak revealed its board have decided that the platform should not be geo-restricted in order to “protect from an organisation replicating Oak’s platform and content internationally, without any modifications, and charging for access to it”.
Caroline Wright, director general of the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA), said that the decision meant the quango had ”ridden roughshod over feedback from teaching and publishing communities” in its decision.
During a debate on Oak in the House of Lords in November, education minister Baroness Barran said that Oak would not be internationalising its content and materials would be geoblocked.
However, she said that the Department for Education was “looking at all the different models of licensing going forward”.
Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association, said that the decision not to geo-restrict Oak’s content was “another gross extension of what the academy was set up to achieve and reneges on previous ministerial assurances to the contrary,” referring to Baroness Barran’s comments last year
However, the arm’s-length body has said that its sole focus will continue to be on supporting UK schools and teachers, and that Oak will conduct no overseas work or promotion.
Oak also announced today that it will broaden its licence for most resources from the autumn to an Open Government Licence (OGL), which would allow anyone to “copy, publish, distribute, transmit and adapt the licensed work for both commercial and non-commercial use, with the individual acknowledging the source of the work”.
It comes after a review undertaken by the government quango with the help of external experts, which Oak said explored the licence that would most benefit teachers and the curriculum market.
The move comes despite founding member Reach Foundation saying previously that its founding articles prevent anyone from profiting from Oak content.
However, Tes understands that it has been agreed an OGL is in line with the protections in Oak’s founding articles.
Ms Wright said that the decision “to throw away IP protection and the competitive advantage of the UK edtech and digital curriculum publishers is a direct result of the DfE’s botched business planning and a woefully under-par market impact analysis of the UK and international curriculum economy”.
She said that BESA, among others, had flagged the need to geoblock Oak’s content to ministers, civil servants and Oak, and had “secured an acknowledgement of the threat” to the UK’s digital economy via a commitment from Oak to introduce geoblocking “early in 2023”.
Ms Wright added that the decision to roll back on the pledge was therefore “hugely disappointing and will inflict yet more damage on UK-based curriculum publishers” and “further hamper investment in the UK’s edtech sector, and subsequently reduce the range and variety of resources available to teachers and pupils”.
She said that BESA “robustly rejects” Oak’s claim that geoblocking its content “will not impact negatively on the UK economy” and that most BESA members (95.7 per cent) had said that it would have a damaging impact on the UK’s curriculum export market when surveyed.
“It is not the first time that the DfE and Oak have ridden roughshod over feedback from teaching and publishing communities and instead ploughed ahead with the unwanted Oak National platform. It is right that a coalition of industry bodies, including BESA, are seeking permission to legally challenge the government’s decision-making and establishment of the Oak National Academy.”
Meanwhile, Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said the union remains concerned “that the impact of Oak will be to reduce diversity of curriculum resources because having a government-funded curriculum provider will potentially drive others out of the market”.
She added: “Open licensing arrangements, and utilisation of resources for artificial intelligence platforms, do not make this situation any better.”
Three organisations, including BESA, launched joint legal challenge against the government’s decision to establish Oak National Academy as a publicly funded arm’s-length body last November, with a decision expected from the judge this spring.
Oak has also said today that the use of an OGL will provide a significant boost to the potential use of artificial intelligence in education, as well as a guardrail on reliability.
An Oak spokesperson said that this was the same approach taken by other government-funded resources, such as the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics and the National Centre for Computing Education, which are open-licensed and not geo-restricted, adding that Oak had not seen “any evidence of negative impact on international markets”.
“Oak’s focus continues to be wholly domestic. We are aligned to the English national curriculum and our remit is to support UK teachers and pupils. We will continue our stance of taking no promotional work whatsoever overseas.”
The spokesperson added that during the licensing review, the board “was faced with the possible scenario that if Oak’s content is geo-restricted, another provider could easily extract Oak resources and open-sourced code, rebuild Oak’s platform in another country and charge for access, without any adaptations. This is against Oak’s mission and would allow companies to profit without adding new value. By making Oak freely available it helps prevent this happening.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We value the importance of a competitive commercial market and so it will always be teachers who choose whether or not to use Oak’s or any other provider’s materials.
“Oak National Academy’s approach to opening up access to its new curriculum materials will help its aim to improve curriculum delivery, reduce workload and support improved pupil outcomes. It will make sure schools and other education organisations will have the ability to adapt and innovate Oak’s materials to suit their needs.”
