STA-0322 Quality Assurance Framework 24-26

The Standards and Testing Agency (STA), an executive agency of the Department for Education (DfE) is looking to procure a pool of proofers to quality assure key stage 1 and key stage 2 national curriculum tests and reception baseline assessment to ensure that these tests are accurate and of high quality. The national curriculum tests include the year 1 phonics screening check, English grammar, punctuation and spelling (key stage 1 and key stage 2), English reading (key stage 1 and key stage 2), mathematics (key stage 1 and key stage 2), and the year 4 multiplication tables check (MTC).

Bidders should be experienced professionals from a range of backgrounds including the early years / key stage 1 / key stage 2 curriculum, teaching, assessment, marking and editorial work, who can offer specialist or professional skills such as subject knowledge and/or proofing training or experience in paper and on-line environments.

There are two key areas:

• Paper-based review including proofing
• On-screen review including proofing, quality assurance and functionality

Ensuring overall quality at STA includes the following activities:

Paper-based and on-screen proofing to ensure:

• accuracy and consistency within and across documents;
• that tests and mark schemes reflect each other;
• the materials meet editorial and the style guidelines; and
• that the modified tests reflect and/or match the live tests, as appropriate.

Quality Assurance of on-screen environments to ensure:

• accuracy of content compared with previous versions;
• accuracy and consistency within and across assessment versions;
• test delivery programme function;
• information presentation;
• scoring accuracy; and
• reporting accuracy.

STA is looking for individuals or organisations who have a good understanding of the early years framework / national curriculum for key stages 1 and 2 in England, in English reading / literacy, English grammar, punctuation and spelling, mathematics / numeracy, including application of skills and use of data in addition to relevant professional experience.

Experience is likely to come from the classroom, working as a subject advisor to schools, curriculum development, marking, test development or wider assessment development or from a publishing or professional proofing background.

Additionally, experts engaged for proofing will have experience of proofing complex materials, on paper and preferably on screen.

Additional information:

An invitation to tender (ITT) for the provision of the Quality Assurance resource (ref: STA-0322) containing all information relevant to this procurement can be obtained by emailing STA Tenders mailbox (TendersTD.STA@education.gov.uk). Both clarifications and tenders should be emailed to TendersTD.STA@education.gov.uk. Please note that the closing date for all bids is 28th July 2023 at 12:00 and any clarification questions must be received no later than 17th July 2023 at 12:00.