The government is not “distorting the curriculum” by setting up Oak National Academy, a minister has said, hitting back at private equity firms who it was claimed are now “put off” investing in ed tech.
Lord Knight, a former education minister, said today he regularly hears “from private equity investors that they are put off investing in education resources” in England becausethe government has made Oak a quango.
Knight, a board member at ed tech firm Century-Tech, told the House of Lords the firms thought Oak was a “distortion caused by the government clumsily entering the market at scale”.
But speaking during a House of Lords debate, academies minister Baroness Barran said it “sticks in my throat” to have “private equity investors who are responsible for considerable distortions in the children’s homes markets lecturing the government on distortions in the ed tech market”.
