20-33 Aspire to HE - Labour Market Sessions for School Year 9

The University of Wolverhampton holds the Aspire to HE (Higher Education), National Collaborative Outreach Programme (NCOP) contract with the Office for Students which funds the NCOP programme - 'the Project' or 'Programme'. 'Aspire to HE' is a partner-based consortium which will deliver sustained, progressive, intensive outreach activity to targeted cohorts of learners (years 9 to 13) in identified Wards to increase the numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds entering Higher Education. The measure of success is the progression of young people onto courses of prescribed Higher Education. The key aim is to increase the rate of young participation in HE in the target Wards: 'young participation' is defined as the proportion of the cohort that enters HE at both 18 and 19 years of age.

This opportunity is to be offered to the Year 9 year groups, across 50 schools, 39 of which we have had a relationship with for the past 2 years and 11 who will be new to Aspire to HE, at the start of the 2020 - 2021 academic year. These schools will be based around the Black Country and Telford area. The successful contractor will need to deliver an intervention that explores employability and labour market information that is made relevant, engaging and accessible, to the target group of Year 9 students.

Delivery of the project must commence 1st September 2020 and be completed by 31st July 2021

There are a number of Mandatory Requirements as part of this tender process, Tenderers must have/meet all mandatory requirements in order to bid for this tender. These are detailed below and can be found in the Scoring Methodology documentation and are scored on a Pass/Fail basis. Any Tenderer that does not pass each of the questions within this section will not progress any further within the Tender process i.e. be taken forward to Award Stage.

-Tenderers must have a turnover in excess of £50K per annum -Tenderers must have experience of undertaking a similar work contract in a School or College environment. -Personnel must be enhanced DBS cleared prior to commencing work on the Contract -Confirm that all personnel will be able to provide the University and the schools they will be working with a copy of their DBS certificate before undertaking the work. -Safeguarding - You must comply with the national safeguarding policies and protocols, such as DofE Keeping Children Safe in Education -Facilitator Cover - confirm you have sufficient mentors to adequately cover this provision for short and long term absence -Tenderers must be able to provide a single point of contact for Contract Management -You must be able to commit to at least monthly business review meetings at the start of the contract.

The documents can be found at https://wlv.bravosolution close date 03 August 2020