National Leaders of Education Reform - Future Opportunity

The purpose of this Contracts Finder Future Opportunity Notice is to notify the market of the Department for Education (DfE) intention to undertake a procurement exercise 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. This contracts Finder Future Opportunity Notice is linked to an Early Supplier Engagement Event and a PIN without call for competition.

DfE will look to procure the services of a national 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 September 2021; and at least a further 100 by 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, 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.

Two market engagement webinars were hosted by the DfE on 23 April 2020 and 22 May 2020. The information pack, along with slides and Q&A are available at https://education.app.jaggaer.com

Additional information: INDICATIVE DATES FOR PROCUREMENT:

DfE intend to open an Early Supplier Engagement Event on 26th August 2020. Potential contractors who register an interest in this opportunity would then be invited to the procurement event. The DfE has published this prior information notice, which is not itself used as a means of calling for competition, and has provided all the information required for the planned Open Procedure contract notice at time of this Prior Information Notice being published and after the minimum period of 35 days, and an open procedure call for competition will be issued with a shortened 15 days duration for tender submissions. DfE have published documentation which is in two parts: (1) the Early supplier engagement event information; (2) Intended ITT documents.

Once the application round 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. Contract award will be around December 2020.

It is anticipated that the initial contract term will be December 2020 - November 2023.

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) Will of the government to continue with the initiative. If the contract runs for a total of five years, then a total budget of £2.5 million will be available.