Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

The purpose of this early engagement notice is to notify the market of a forthcoming market engagement event relating to a potential procurement of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Advisers. The department will be undertaking an online event on 6 June 2023 for interested suppliers.

The Department for Education (DfE) is exploring opportunities to procure expert advisers in SEND who will help to provide external technical expertise to support local area SEND improvement. The DfE Vulnerable Children's Unit will deploy SEND Advisers into local areas in need of support. These advisers will be experienced leaders who use their expertise to assist senior leaders and SEND management teams in local areas to address areas of weakness. The procurement will look to appoint Advisers across a wide range of skills encompassing all aspects of the SEND system SEND Advisers will be primarily selected via open competition from the Dynamic Procurement System. To allow for a more bespoke process and be able to select the most suitable adviser for the individual needs of the local authority, the DfE will use a preferred supplier list that ranks a pool of advisers based on an overall criteria score. DfE are then able to directly award individual contracts to the highest ranked available supplier on the list.

The Department will be undertaking a market engagement webinar event on the 6 June at 10am. We would like to invite you to the webinar, where we will focus on a range of aspects including potential requirements and roles. It is anticipated that the event will last 45 minutes. The objectives of the event will be to:

Please note that a maximum of two people from each organisation can attend the event. We may record all questions asked, as well as answers given, and make these publicly available as reference for all interested parties. If you are interested in attending, please register on the DfE e-procurement portal (Jaggaer) and register your interest in the Early Supplier Engagement event (ESEE) with reference ssq_391.

If the procurement exercise goes ahead, it is expected to open in July 2023 with contracts being awarded in September 2023. More information on the potential procurement process will be provided following this market engagement activity.

More information on the procurement process will be provided following market engagement activity. This notice is for information only and is not a call for competition. The Department reserves the right not to enter a formal procurement process and not award contracts. Accordingly, the Authority will not be liable for any bid cost, expenditure, work or effort incurred by a provider in acting on the basis of this PIN. All future information will be issued to potential providers via the DfE eTendering Portal.

Kind regards

SEND Policy and Operations Team