Education and training services

Tender description

The Department for Education is planning to procure an organisation to deliver an English Hubs Training Centre. The purpose of the English Hubs Training Centre is to train a network of literacy specialists in English Hub schools across the country, and to ensure the quality of their work in supporting struggling schools to improve their early language and literacy teaching, with a particular focus on phonics. The Training Centre will have 2 functions: — training literacy specialists to support schools to improve outcomes in early language and reading for their children, with an emphasis on improving outcomes for the most disadvantaged children, — ensuring the quality of the work of the literacy specialists. Improving reading and writing is central to the Government’s agenda of promoting equality of opportunity for all, unlocking talent in every community and securing school improvement. In October 2017, the Secretary of State for Education announced funding of 12 000 000 GBP to establish a network of English Hubs in the Northern Powerhouse region. In December 2017, additional funding of 14 300 000 GBP was announced in unlocking talent, fulfilling potential to allow delivery of a national network. The purpose of the Training Centre is to train and advise teachers appointed by hub schools to become literacy specialists and to ensure that the support they offer is high quality and consistent. The training will give literacy specialists the skills to support struggling schools to improve outcomes for their children in early language and reading. The department is seeking a supplier with proven expertise in the teaching of early language and reading, with a focus on systematic synthetic phonics, and also with a track record of successfully raising standards in disadvantaged schools using this approach. The Training Centre will: — provide training and support for up to 180 literacy specialists, and — ensure the quality of the support offered by literacy specialists. In the first year of the contract, the Training Centre will develop and deliver an initial programme of at least 7 and up to 10 days of training for literacy specialists. This will equip them to support local schools to improve their teaching of early language and reading. In the second year of the contract, the Training Centre will provide at least 7 and up to 10 days of training for any new literacy specialists and will provide an additional 3 days of refresher/update training for existing literacy specialists. The supplier will assess the quality of the training provided through an end-of-training and a mid-programme survey, which will assess the extent to which trainees found the training useful, relevant and well-supported by evidence. Surveys should ask how well the training was matched to each trainee’s development needs, asking participants to report on their knowledge and skills before and after the training. The tenderer’s training plan should set out a process for using the information collected in surveys to refine the training programme. The Training Centre will ensure that all of the support offered by literacy specialists, including but not limited to the 6 days of intensive school-to-school support, is high quality and that support offered by literacy specialists from different hub schools is consistent and conforms to any government policy on early reading and phonics. The Training Centre will agree a quality strategy with the Department to achieve this goal.