FE Governor Recruitment

THIS IS AN INVITATION TO A MARKET ENGAGEMENT EVENT

The purpose of this Prior Information Notice (PIN) is to initiate market engagement and inform Potential Suppliers of the opportunity to express interest in providing the service to selected further education (FE) colleges in England, including sixth form colleges and designated institutions. Suppliers should note that the organisations which operate FE colleges are charities and governors are charity trustees. Governor roles are voluntary and generally unpaid. The FE Colleges Governor Recruitment Service ("the Service") will be an integral part of the Department for Education's (DfE's) new help and support active support offer for colleges. The Service is designed to strengthen governance in colleges by supporting the recruitment of a diverse range of appropriately skilled and knowledgeable governors to key roles on governing boards. The Service will be free at the point of use. To ensure that the Service is targeted on those college boards which have the greatest need of help, access will be via a referral from the department, which will have the discretion to define "key" roles and will prioritise or limit referrals to ensure alignment with the terms of the contract with the Supplier. The outputs will be: A successful service model whereby the Supplier will need to: understand and communicate the benefits and responsibilities of being an FE governor to potential volunteers; work with college governing board chairs and governance professionals (clerks) to better understand the candidate requirements for the roles that are to be filled; and so ensure a diverse selection of appropriately qualified and well-briefed candidates for interview by the board. A minimum of 137 appropriately skilled and diverse governors to be appointed to key governor roles over the contract term. Recruitment should be spread across the three financial years. This might, for example, mean a target of 37 appointments in 2022-23, followed by 50 in each of the years 2023-24 and 2024-25. Support and advice for boards to put in place effective induction, support and development to help new governors understand their new responsibilities, and to continue in their roles for the longer term. The required outcomes or key performance indicators will be derived from the required outputs and from measures of user satisfaction. Funding will run from September 2022 to the end of March 2025 and applications will open in April 2022. A provisional total of up to £550,000 is available for this service. We expect to appoint one supplier. The Further Education Colleges Governor Recruitment Service follows on from the successful FE Recruitment Pilot conducted in 2020-21. This service is one of a range of measures designed to support improvement in the practice of FE college boards. Further information can be found in Skills for Jobs and in the department's guidance for colleges on oversight and intervention.

Additional information: Estimated Contract Start Date: July 2022 Contract End Date: 31 March 2025

Estimated value or range of values: £550,000 (£150,000 in FY 2022/23, followed by £200,000 in years 2023/24 and 2024/25)

DfE will be hosting an open, virtual early market engagement event on 13th April 2022 from 13:00 to 14:30 via Microsoft Teams. All parties wishing to attend this event must register their interest on DfE's e-Tendering portal: https://education.app.jaggaer.com

To register your interest please navigate to the Jaggaer home page, click view opportunities and then select: 6666_FE Governor Recruitment - Event joining instructions will be issued following an expression of interest.