Eligibility Checking System

Tender description

The Eligibility Checking System (ECS) is a tool offered to local authorities to assist them in identifying who is entitled to specified educational benefits. The system provides simple yes/no answers to enquiries as to whether a family is entitled. Although it was originally designed to check free school meal (FSM) entitlement, the system has recently been extended to enable local authorities to use the ECS to also check eligibility for the early learning for two-year-olds entitlement and Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP). The introduction of Universal Credit (UC) – which will replace most of the benefits currently used to give entitlement – means that we need to change the eligibility criteria for FSM, EYPP and early learning for two-year-olds. In turn this will mean that the ECS will require development to accommodate these new eligibility criteria, and will need to be tested against the new DWP UC IT system to ensure systems continue to interface correctly. It will also need to retain functionality to check eligibility against current (legacy) benefits until full roll-out of UC is achieved. Start and end dates of the contract: October 2015 to December 2016 (with an option to extend for a further one year).