Technical Assessment of Home Learning Environment Early Years applications

The Department for Education (DfE) intends to undertake an Expression of Interest (EOI) process to procure the services of an organisation to undertake the technical assessment of the quality assurance exercise for the Early Years Applications.

The Department will be running a quality assurance exercise to identify and provide an indication of quality for early years apps of high educational value, so that parents can make more informed choices when selecting apps for their children.

We have established an educational expert panel, who are responsible for drawing up the criteria for educational quality in early years literacy, language and communication apps. These criteria will be used to assess apps and award an indication of quality to all those meeting the standard.

In addition, we are looking to procure expertise to develop a technical framework against which to assess apps. The chosen supplier will be responsible for assessing whether apps that have been approved by the educational expert panel are also in adherence to certain technical external standards such as GDPR and security standards.

The formation of this technical framework will be developed in conjunction with the educational quality criteria by spring/summer 2019. Once both sets of criteria have been established there will be an open invitation in the spring to app developers and promoters to submit their apps for consideration and the chosen supplier will be required to complete the technical assessment of apps by early summer.

We would expect the chosen supplier to be able to demonstrate a strong record of achievement in reviewing the technical standards of digital apps in either education or another field.

If you would like to express an interest in our requirement please email [email protected] by 14th March 2019.

Additional information: DfE will administer the procurement process electronically via the government Contract Finder. No hard copy documents will be issued; all communications with DfE (including EOI submission) will be conducted via Contract Finder.

Indicative dates for procurement:

• Late-March 2019 - EOI opens • May 2019 - indicative contract award.

Further information and background:

On 31 July 2018, the Secretary of State announced that the Department would be launching a competition to identify high quality mobile/tablet apps, with the ambition of making these freely accessible to disadvantaged families. This commitment fits within the context of a Departmental priority to reduce by half the proportion of children who do not achieve at least expected levels across all goals in the 'communication & language' and 'literacy' areas of learning at the end of reception year by 2028.

The Department for Education (DfE) is also exploring commercial options to provide access for disadvantaged children in the early years to high quality educational mobile/tablet apps. These would be apps for children to use within the home environment to improve their language, literacy and communication skills. We will be running a separate procurement process to procure one or more apps to be delivered to disadvantaged two-, three- and four-year olds within a limited number of local areas (approx. 8 to 12). Any app procured would need to fulfil the quality and technical criteria as mentioned above.

The DfE is not committing to undertake any formal commissioning activity resulting from this notice, and we may use the information gathered via this process to support any future commercial activity.

Please note that this PIN is not a call to competition and the DfE is not bound to enter into any procurement activity because of it.