NSEAD in partnership with Oak National Academy

Oak National Academy today unveils 14 new curriculum partners who will together help create thousands of curriculum and teaching resources in eight new subjects. The new resources will cover art & design, citizenship, computing, D&T, Modern Foreign Languages, PE, RE and RSHE.

NSEAD are pleased to announce that we will be collaborating once again with the Oak National Academy to develop full model curriculum sequences and lesson resources for primary and secondary art, craft, and design. NSEAD worked with the Oak National Academy to develop the primary resources developed during the pandemic and a diversity review of our KS3 curriculum.

Fully funded by the UK Government, Oak National Academy provide free access to thousands of teacher-made, fully resourced lessons for teachers to adapt and use with your pupils. During 2023-25, they are developing and releasing all-new curriculum plans and teaching resources.

Oak National Academy Director, Matthew Hood said:

Oak is, at its heart, a collaboration of teachers and experts sharing their knowledge to help their peers. This powerful partnership announced today ensures Oak will continue to provide schools and teachers with high-quality resources into the future.

In 2020 Dr Emese Hall and Susan Ogier worked with a team of primary teachers to pull together a strong framework for primary education and 60 lessons for KS1 and KS2 children to access whilst schools were closed during the pandemic, and beyond. NSEAD did not produce the original resources for KS3 and KS4. However, following feedback from NSEAD members, also Oak worked with NSEAD President Marlene Wylie to conduct a full and rapid diversity review of the materials that had been developed for secondary art and design. These resources have been accessed by thousands of learners, but also used by teachers as models to build upon and learn from. 

In this new phase of work, NSEAD Curriculum leads Marlene Wylie and Paul Carney will build upon our existing curriculum resources and The Big Landscape project to design a curriculum that is underpinned by robust research and examples of better practice from the NSEAD community. Marlene and Paul are highly regarded leaders of art, craft and design education. Between them they bring a wealth of experience from the classroom, from their research and their work supporting teachers and schools. 

NSEAD General Secretary Michele Gregson said:

NSEAD believes that all learners have an entitlement to art, craft and design education that is underpinned by well designed, future facing contemporary curriculum choices that are relevant and adapted to the specific context of learners – wherever they go to school. This is an exciting opportunity to work with Oak National Academy to design flexible, adaptable models of practice, informed by national subject experts and recent high level research. This work is fully Government funded for the benefit of all art, craft and design teachers. Our hope is that our partnership with Oak alongside our own Big Landscape project will result in an unparalleled package of support for art, craft and design educators. Better practice for teachers, led by teachers – they deserve nothing less.


NSEAD welcomes applications from inspiring and experienced teachers to join our curriculum production team. Find out more about these opportunities. 

Read more about our partnership here.