Today, Oxford University Press (OUP) and Ark Curriculum Plus announced a partnership which will see OUP continue to develop and publish Ark Curriculum Plus’s Primary Science, History and Geography Mastery programmes beyond their initial pilot stage. The programmes are an exciting new range of primary curriculum resources with embedded training, created by Ark Curriculum Plus and co-developed with teachers at Ark schools.
OUP will be providing the digital teaching resources and professional development for the Mastery programmes via Oxford Owl, their award-winning educational platform. In addition, OUP will be publishing print versions of the accompanying workbooks, to support pupils’ progression of knowledge and skills in line with Ofsted requirements.
Claire Varlet-Baker, UK Schools Director at OUP, says: “Our mission is to create world-class educational products and make them available as widely as possible, and so we are delighted to be working with Ark Curriculum Plus and Ark, one of the UK’s leading MATs, to publish their Primary Science, History and Geography Mastery programmes to support a broad curriculum in UK primary schools. Our Publishing team have years of experience partnering with educators to make resources which are loved by teachers and pupils alike.”
Liz Tyler, Ark Curriculum Plus Managing Director, says, “We are delighted to enter into this partnership with OUP to take the Mastery Programmes that have been having a positive impact in Ark Schools and beyond for nearly three years now to a wider audience. We are excited about bringing together OUP’s publishing experience with our expertise in curriculum design and implementation and teacher development to have an even bigger impact on schools and on children’s knowledge and understanding of these subjects.”
Over the next year, OUP and Ark Curriculum Plus will continue to develop the resources based on the experience of the extensive pilot to ensure that all teachers are fully supported, regardless of subject specialism, to help their pupils master the knowledge and skills needed to become confident young scientists, historians and geographers. The programmes will be available for schools to start teaching September 2022.
Oxford University Press (OUP) is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence.
It currently publishes thousands of new publications a year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs approximately 6,000 people worldwide.
It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing program that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, children's books, materials for teaching English as a foreign language, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and academic journals.
Ark Curriculum Plus is an Ark Venture – a non-profit organisation whose mission is to empower teachers to give every young person, regardless of their background, the subject knowledge and skills that will allow them to succeed.
Ark Curriculum Plus offers a range of complete curriculum programmes that provide teachers with high-quality professional development and a comprehensive set of classroom resources tied to a carefully-sequenced curriculum in each of maths, science, English, history and geography. They work closely with schools in the Ark multi-academy trust to incubate, pilot, innovate and adapt these programmes in a responsive way - combining first-hand classroom best-practice with evidence-based teaching approaches.
