High Potential Initial Teacher Training and Leadership Development Programme

The Department for Education (DfE) is looking to procure a contract to deliver a High Potential Initial Teacher Training and Leadership Development Programme (HPITT).

We are looking to source a supplier (that optimises SME participation) to deliver a single national (England) contract that will design, develop and deliver a programme that includes;

- Programme promotion and attraction of appropriate high potential candidates

- Assessment and selection of candidates

- Recruitment and vetting of eligible schools

- Pre-programme induction and school placement

- Design and delivery of employment based accredited initial teacher training

- Design and delivery of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) and leadership development

- Mentor support

HPITT is intended to attract high performing graduates and career changers into teaching and place them in schools serving low-income communities with high numbers of economically disadvantaged pupils.

Programme participants will be employed to fill vacancies and contribute to creating social mobility opportunities by closing the gap between deprived pupils and their peers.

Any supplier of the programme would be responsible for the design, development and delivery of a two-year high quality initial teacher training and leadership development programme to 1750 high performing candidates per cohort.

This would include:

1. development of a programme identity which can be considered in the context of DfE's teaching brand and its work to attract candidates to the profession;

2. promotion of the programme nationally, attracting applications from high performing graduates or career changers who have the potential to be highly skilled teachers and influential classroom leaders;

3. management of candidate assessment to ensure those entering the programme have the potential to teach and to develop the right skills, behaviours and resilience to succeed as teacher;

4. design and delivery of accredited Initial Teacher Training (ITT), such that participants will:

a. be placed within challenging schools in England that serve low-income communities, where they will contribute to closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers

b. work as unqualified teachers and undertake high quality employment-based ITT leading to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS);

c. undertake a leadership development programme to be completed by the end of the two-year HPITT programme; and

5. working in partnership with eligible schools across England to deliver employment-based ITT, employment placement and school mentoring to support participants.

The contract is likely to be for a term of 4 years that will deliver two cohorts of participants, the first of which will start their employment-based ITT in September 2021 and the second in September 2022. The contract may include an option to extend for a further period of up to two years, to deliver an additional one or two further cohorts.

Additional information: The Department would like to facilitate networking between organisations who may be interested in the delivery of a future programme. If you would like to be involved in any networking activity, please send details of your organisation, a contact name, contact details and the capacity in which you would like to be involved e.g. main contractor, subcontractor, partner or consortium member to [email protected] with HPITT Networking as the subject of your email.

Please note that this is not a call to competition and the DfE is not bound to enter into any procurement activity or award any contract because of it. The DfE is not committing to undertake any formal commissioning activity resulting from this notice.

It is intended as an awareness, communication and information-gathering exercise offering an opportunity for potential suppliers to understand potential commissioning intentions.

Responses and information received as part of any pre-market engagement activity may be used to shape the DfE's specification of requirements and scope any resulting procurement process.

The DfE will not be liable for any bid cost, expenditure, work or effort incurred by a supplier in acting on the basis of this Prior Information Notice.

Any future competition will be run using the DfE e-Tendering Portal Jaggaer.

We recommend that any suppliers who may have an interest in participating in any future procurement activity register on the e-Tendering Portal. Suppliers can access this system at https://education.app.jaggaer.com where the details of how to register and the terms of free registration are provided.