National Leaders of Education Reform - Opportunity Notice

The Department for Education (DfE) is seeking to appoint a suitably experienced single contractor to support the delivery of the National Leaders of Education (NLE) reforms. The contractor can be either one organisation, or a group of economic operators. In accordance to the Public Contract Regulations Open Procedure DfE has published this Contract Notice, which is a call for competition, post the publication of a PIN that has already run for 35 days (which included the intended ITT documents). This contract notice has been shortened to run for a duration of 15 days, up to the tender submission deadline. The market engagement are available. These are included in the ITT within the DFE Jaggaer system. Interested parties will need to register via Jaggaer to access the documents.

DfE is seeking to appoint a suitably experienced single contractor to: - 1) Identify, recruit, assess and make recommendations to the DfE on the provisional accreditation of NLEs, using the NLE standards to make those judgements; and 2) Design and deliver a development programme for provisionally-accredited NLEs, using an NLE curriculum framework provided by the DfE. The potential contractor will deliver the assessment and training of NLEs over three years beginning in academic year 2020 to 2021; the potential contractor will be required to accredit and train at least 450 NLEs ready for deployment by the end of September 2021; and at least a further 100 by the end of September 2022. The potential contractor will be required to deliver, the NLE assessment and training programme on behalf of the DfE. In summary, there are 4 core functions : 1.Identifying and recruiting applicants; 2.Assessing applicants; 3.Moderation of assessment outcomes; and 4.Training, including follow-on CPD and peer-to-peer support. The potential contractor must have national reach, either by Consortiums, building partnerships or using existing regional infrastructure; and be able to target recruitment towards the needs of schools in most need of support. This will be an evolving picture as per the contract's requirements, the potential contractor's strategy will also need to be adaptable, for example in terms of place, phase or type of school needing support. The potential contractor must nominate a Strategic Lead to have oversight of the programme. The purpose of this role is to bring senior, credible, educational leadership to the programme. During the lifetime of the contract, the training curriculum will change.

Additional information: Once the ITT has closed, applications will undergo an initial desktop assessment based on the criteria and weighting set out in the prospectus and application pack, following which there will be a moderation of those results before final award and mobilisation.

The DfE will administer the procurement processes electronically via the DfE e-Tendering Portal: Jaggaer. No hard copy documents will be issued and all communications with DfE (including final submission of tenders) will be conducted via the Jaggaer Portal. Bidders who are not already registered on the portal can register here: https://education.app.jaggaer.com

When registered and signed in to Jaggaer you will need to express an interest in the opportunity to be able to access all relevant documentation including the application pack. For any assistance required in registering bidders should contact the Jaggaer helpdesk: [email protected]

DfE confirm that the initial contract period for this procurement is three years and the total budget available for the first three years is £1.7 million. DfE reserve the right to extend the contract up to twice, each time for a single year duration, subject to the following conditions: (1) Satisfactory performance of the contractor to date (judgement to be solely at the discretion of the DfE); (2) Availability of the budget; and (3) Policy commitment to continue the initiative. If the contract runs for a total of five years, then a total budget of £2.5 million will be available.