Primary education services

Tender description

The Department for Education intends to run a competitive procurement process for the development and delivery of an assessment for Reception aged children to baseline their prior attainment at their point of entry to the English schools system (a Reception Baseline Assessment). The Government response to the 2017 Primary Assessment Consultation proposed the introduction of a new assessment in reception to be used to establish pupils’ prior attainment as the starting point for calculating school level progress measures when pupils reach the end of key stage 2 (KS2). The target date to introduce this new baseline as a statutory assessment for all English state-funded primary schools is September 2020. The assessment will measure reception age children within the first half term of entering a school in England and provide the starting point for the progress measure that will be used for school accountability. This procurement seeks to award a contract to an organisation or consortia of organisations to develop and deliver the reception baseline assessment. The duration of the contract will cover: any necessary trialling of the material in the 2018/19 academic year; a national pilot in the 2019/20 academic year for the September intake, as well as for schools that have intakes in January and April; and then 2 years of statutory delivery of the assessment to all reception pupils in England in the academic years 2020/21 and 2021/22. The Department may extend the contract for one further academic year until 31.8.2023. Suppliers may plan to adapt an existing assessment or develop an entirely new one as long as they can meet the delivery timeline requirements. Bidders for this contract will have to demonstrate how their proposed assessment meets the areas for evaluation described in the Invitation to Tender documentation and also provides a value for money assessment for schools. The contract is expected to have a value of up to 9 800 000 GBP excluding any extension period. The anticipated contract period is: Start: 9.4.2018 End: 31.8.2022 with a possible extension of one year until 31.8.2023