Lessons created by Northampton teacher streamed nationwide

This week, pupils up and down the country have been learning from a science teacher at Northampton Academy, after lessons he helped design went live on a new website.

The Oak National Academy (ONA) is a government-backed online classroom and was set up in response to the current pandemic.

Teachers from the nation’s top-performing schools have joined together to create content that covers a wide range of subjects and is freely accessible to reception students through to year 10.

Forming part of this national team of top teachers is head of science Dr Liam Fishwick from Northampton Academy. He said: “I’m just amazed by how quickly the project came together and the positive interaction there’s been so far.

"It’s fantastic to see that we’re helping so many students across the country, especially those who may not otherwise have had access to these kinds of materials at this time.

"I hope the platform continues to grow as the curriculum offer broadens and we can carry on providing these great online resources for young people during this distance learning period.”

Alongside delivering online learning for his own pupils, Liam has been volunteering his time and expertise to help create resources for pupils across the country.

To produce the science content, Liam worked with three other teachers from schools across United Learning– the Group of which Northampton Academy is also a part of.

In the space of a week, the teachers had collaborated to design a curriculum, learned to film content and produced resources ready for the launch of the platform on Monday.

By midnight on Wednesday, ONA had already seen 800,000 lessons streamed and completed in total.

Liam’s particular contribution to the impressive educational hub has been writing, filming and resourcing the Year 9 science lessons.

Nat Parnell, Principal of Northampton Academy, said: “Dr Fishwick’s impressive contribution to the Oak National Academy is not only giving students across the country access to high-quality educational materials during this time, but is inspiring all of us at Northampton Academy to continue to set high aspirations for our teaching and learning.

"It’s great to see the platform experience such success since its launch at the start of the week and I look forward to supporting Dr Fishwick with his ongoing efforts.”