Assistive Technology Training Test and Learn

The DfE will appoint a delivery partner (DP), via a contract agreement, to run a training programme in Assistive Technology (AT) for up to 150 mainstream schools. This programme will build upon the AT Pilot from earlier this year and will run from 01/11/2022 - 15/08/2023.

Key activities:

- Relationship management

- Recruiting mainstream schools in England to the programme. The DP will work with an independent evaluating partner to try to ensure the participating schools will deliver reliable impact data.

- Being first point of contact for participating schools.

- Scheduling sessions, being mindful to avoid school holidays.

- Attending regular meetings with the DfE and evaluating partner.

Resource creation

- Creating 2 new emails for school leaders to gain their buy in at the beginning and end of the programme.

- Filming 3-6 new videos showing real life case studies of AT being used effectively in schools and assessments and evaluations of AT being used with individual learners with SEND (these latter two can be simulations if necessary).

- Amending existing resources created for the DfE-funded AT pilot programme where necessary. These are currently held on the Nasen website and are linked to below.

- Creating an accessible and reliable webpage to host the resource bank. (NB all resources created for this programme will be the intellectual property of the DfE.)

Facilitation

- Facilitation of ~75 sessions (the schools will be divided into approx. 15 groups of 10 and each group will receive 5 sessions) from Mar to Jul 2023.

- A written log of attendance at all sessions.

The delivery partner must:

- Have an excellent understanding of AT, including its use, assessment of needs and expected outcomes.

- Understand the needs of schools, ensuring adoption of AT meets, and is seen by leaders to meet, organisational need.

- Be able to produce real-world resources including videos of assessments and case studies

- Have experienced facilitators able to develop small groups of staff into school AT Leads

- Have capacity to arrange and deliver 75 facilitated sessions over 5 months

- Collaborate with the evaluating partner.

To tender for this work and be eligible to bid, you must register in advance on Jaggaer, the DfE's e-procurement system by 31st August 2022. Registration guidance and links below.

Additional information: UPDATED TIMELINES: The tender will go live on Wednesday 14th September 2022. The Procurement will be run using the Education and Children's Social Care Dynamic Purchasing System (ECS DPS).

To tender for this work and be eligible to bid, you must register in advance on Jaggaer, the DfE's e-procurement system (link provided) . Please follow the steps as outlined in the guidance attached to submit your application to join the ECSC DPS via Jaggaer. Please be aware that you must have completed your registration, logged in and selected one or more of the categories no later than 13th September 2022. This opportunity will be published under the categories: ECSC09, 13 and 14 - you only need to have selected one of these to access the opportunity.

We will award a contract to a single supplier for the delivery of the services - this could be a consortium led by a single lead supplier (NB: consortiums must be registered as an entity on Jaggaer prior to the tender going live).

Please note that dates and figures above are subject to change.

We will be holding an hour-long webinar on Tues 23rd August 2022 to discuss this opportunity further and give any prospective bidders the chance to ask questions. Please sign up in advance by registering via our Eventbrite page (link provided) . The webinar will be recorded, to request a copy, please email [email protected].