Education and training services

Tender description

The Department for Education (DfE) is seeking national lead providers to lead the delivery, from September 2021, of the national roll-out of the Early Career Framework (ECF) for Early Career Teachers and their mentors. Lead providers will do this by providing schools with access to training programmes for both Early Career Teachers and their mentors, underpinned by the ECF, to support them to offer an ECF-based induction to their Early Career Teachers. Successful lead providers will be expected to develop and deliver training based upon the Core Induction Programmes, which are available at https://www.early-career-framework.education.gov.uk/. These core induction programmes will include: • a carefully designed curriculum sequence; • comprehensive self-directed study materials; • comprehensive mentor session materials; • training session outlines to support group training. Successful lead providers will also be expected to create a Full Induction Programme, which will need to build on one chosen core induction programme. The full induction programme will offer: • full high-quality training for Early Career Teachers delivered to schools, that builds on the training session outlines and complements the self-study and mentor sessions in the relevant core induction programme. It is envisaged that this should include a minimum of 18 hours face-to-face training. • full high-quality training sessions for mentors. It is envisaged that this should include a minimum of 9 hours face-to-face training. It is anticipated that DfE will appoint successful bidders to a national Framework Agreement for Early Career Teacher and mentor training. Under the terms of that framework agreement, this will allow DfE to make specific purchases (Call-Offs) from lead providers within a 4-year term. Lead providers will need to: • train a minimum of 1 000 Early Career Teachers and their assigned mentors for cohorts starting in September 2021. • significantly increase capacity to train a minimum of 2 000 Early Career Teachers and their mentors for cohorts starting from September 2022 onwards. It is expected that lead providers will deliver their service in partnership with other high quality organisations including the national network of teaching school hubs which will be in place Early in 2021. It is also expected that teaching school hubs, along with other education training providers, will play a key role in the delivery of the ECF. DfE recognises that lead providers might need to build their capacity and partnerships over the term of the framework agreement, therefore, DfE is proposing to create the flexibility for lead providers to add new delivery partners once they are appointed to the framework. To encourage the formation of ECF delivery partnerships, DfE will be hosting networking events with successful lead providers and potential delivery partners taking place between 25 February and 5 March 2021. Further details on these events will be provided in due course. Organisations that are interested in acting as an ECF delivery partner can register interest by sending the name of the organisation and contact details, including a named individual, to ecf.procurement@education.gov.uk