Attendance mentoring for persistently absent pupils - pilot project

Regular attendance at school is vital for children's education, wellbeing, and long-term development. The Secretary of State for Education, Nadhim Zahawi, has made clear that excellent attendance is a priority to ensure that all children can catch up on lost learning caused by the pandemic.

As announced in the Levelling Up White Paper, the department is planning a new attendance pilot in a group of Education Improvement Areas where there is a clear demographic need to improve persistent and severe absence rates.

Persistent and Severe absence are a concern across the education sector, raised in publications by, for example, the Centre for Social Justice and the Children's Commissioner. Mentoring to improve attendance has been suggested as a potential solution to this issue.

We are looking for a contractor that will recruit and train mentors to provide targeted 1 - 1 support with an identified pupil or their family to overcome barriers to attendance. This relationship will need to be reactive to the individuals needs with the overall end goal to improve attendance.

Additional information:

This contract is to deliver an attendance support offer, initially for one year with the intention to extend to three years (total). The support offer will start in one identified priority Education Improvement Area (EIA) in the first year and aim to support 500-1000 pupils, with the option to scale up to multiple areas nationally and support larger volumes of pupils in years two and three. More information on EIA's can be found in the Governments Levelling Up white paper here.

We need a supplier to support vulnerable children and families in each of the identified areas to improve attendance. Through this work we aim to enhance capacity for early help/intervention, by working with pupils who are persistently absent and focusing particularly on those pupils who are, or are at risk of being, severely absent (missing with <50% attendance).

The successful contractor will be expected to provide trained practitioners to hold one-to-one conversations with identified pupils and families with an aim to improving attendance. This support should be responsive to the individuals needs and because of this it may be delivered in the school, or in the pupil's home.

Dependent on the pupils needs, trained practitioners may also be expected to work with external local agencies to ensure all support to a particular family or pupil is aligned and drives towards overcoming attendance barriers.

The successful contractor may also need to work with evaluators to evidence the impact of the support throughout the project lifecycle.

The Department wishes to assess market capability and capacity to administer and deliver a response. Details of a virtual pre-market engagement event will be given at a later date to all those who have registered.

Please register an interest in attending (max two per organisation) date/time TBC to:sendbaea.commercial@education.gov.uk by 6th April 2022

SCHEDULED DATE FOR PUBLICATION OF CONTRACT NOTICE: Estimated May 2022

ESTIMATED TOTAL VALUE OF CONTRACT: £5 Million excluding VAT

START AND END DATES OF THE TOTAL CONTRACT LENGTH: September 2022 - March 2025

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 consultations.

As part of the market engagement, we wish to test views on areas such as:

Whether you believe you have the capacity to successfully manage these potential opportunities?

Whether you believe you have the capacity to successfully manage these potential opportunities?

Whether you believe you have the expertise to successfully manage these potential opportunities?

Whether you have any other provision/ contracts/ grants with any other government department?