Further Education Colleges Board Capability Reviews Pilot

The purpose of the PIN is to initiate market engagement. It is not a call for competition. This PIN is intended to inform the market of a potential future procurement exercise to appoint a supplier to work with the Department on providing the outlined service on a pilot basis to selected Further Education (FE) Colleges.

The FE Colleges Board Reviews Pilot is designed to test the efficacy of increasing the availability of external board capability reviews for the governing boards of FE colleges, and so increase their capacity to offer strong leadership to their colleges.

These external board reviews will be free at the point of use. To ensure that the service is targeted on those college boards which have the greatest need of help, referrals will be made to the supplier via the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) or the Further Education Commissioner (FEC) Team at the Department for Education.

The expected outputs are: • Around 30 in-depth board capability reviews, which would typically include an assessment of the skills, experience, and development needs of board members, and an analysis of strategic planning, operational structures and working practices, to identify areas for development. The review process would typically include paper analysis, a visit to the college, attendance at a board meeting, and interviews with the clerk, the chair, board members and key college leaders • Each capability review will be followed by a review report, which sets out the analysis of issues, makes evidence-based recommendations for change and development, and provides a robust action plan to secure the necessary improvements • A short evaluation report, based on a survey of users

Funding will be available in the financial year from April 2020 to March 2021. A maximum of £110,000 (including VAT) is available for this pilot (up to £100,000 for delivery and up to £10,000 for evaluation). We expect to appoint one supplier.

Bidders will need to provide a tender response for both sections, which will carry weightings of 91%:9% in line with the split of overall funding. The contract will be awarded to the bidder with the highest overall score, but we reserve the right to not award the evaluation portion of the contract if it does not offer value for money when compared to an in-house option.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will be derived from the required outputs and from measures of customer satisfaction. They will be finalised with the successful bidder following contract award.

We will be holding a webinar to give some more information and provide an opportunity to ask questions on Thursday 5th March at 14:30 - 15:30. Please email [email protected] to express your interest and we will send on the invite. All information from the day, including Q&A, will be made available to those who are unable to attend.

Additional information: NB: In this document "colleges" should be taken to refer to ESFA-funded FE college corporations, Sixth Form College corporations (SFCs), and institutions designated as being in the statutory FE sector under section 28 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 (designated institutions).

The Further Education Colleges Board Reviews pilot is one of a range of measures designed to support improvement in the practice of FE college boards. Further information can be found in the FE Leadership and Governance press release (dated 27th February 2020) here: https://www.gov.uk/government/latest?departments%5B%5D=department-for-education.

This procurement will be run through Jaggaer, the Department's e-Tendering platform. You must be registered on Jaggaer to view and bid for this opportunity when it is launched. You can register and view opportunities here: https://education.app.jaggaer.com/.

In preparing their tenders, potential suppliers are advised to refer to relevant guidance, including: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/fe-governance, https://www.aoc.co.uk/funding-and-corporate-services/governance/governance-resources/code-good-governance-english-colleges, and https://www.charitygovernancecode.org/en.