Step Up to Social Work Programme (Cohort 8) - Administration Solution

The Department for Education (DfE) requires a provider to deliver a fully managed service under one contract that performs administration of the assessment and recruitment support services to enable the national recruitment of candidates onto the Step Up to Social Work programme. The service requires dedicated administrative support during assessment centre period (including but not limited to support at in person assessment centre days where required). A more detailed description of the required service can be found in Section 1 of the attached Soft Market Testing document.

DfE would like to gain a clear understanding of the level of interest from the market in the providing the service, as well as insight into how potential providers might approach the delivery of the service in question.

We ask that interested suppliers complete the questions in Section 3 of the Soft Market Testing document and return their response by 12:00 3rd May 2022 via Jaggaer.

The service relates to the delivery of the 8th cohort for the Step Up to Social Work programme. It is anticipated at this time that the 8th cohort will begin their Step Up training in January 2024, therefore it is estimated that activity relating to the service will need to commence no later than October 2022. A table setting out indicative milestone dates relating to delivery of the service is set out in the Soft Market Testing document.

This notice does not constitute a call for competition to procure any services for the Department. The procurement of any services will be carried out in accordance with the provisions of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. The purpose of this PIN is to stimulate early market interest and invite interested parties to take part in preliminary market engagement by completing the questions set out in Section 3 of the Soft Market Testing document.

Additional information:

Please refer to the attached Soft Market Testing document for more information, and for completion of the questionnaire.