Final Assessment of National Professional Qualifications (NPQs)

The National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL), an executive agency of the Department for Education, anticipates that, during 2016, it will look to commence a procurement exercise to deliver final assessments for participants undertaking the National Professional Qualifications.

Each qualification includes a final assessment that participants undertake when completing their period of professional development. The final assessment process acts as a quality indicator and supports progression to further study or more senior roles including Headteacher.

The contract will be for a minimum term of 9 months with an option to extend if required. It is anticipated that a new contract will be awarded in January 2017 and the provider should be able to mobilise themselves quickly to deliver final assessment for a maximum of 15,000 NPQML, NPQSL and NPQH participants.

The National Professional Qualifications are a suite of leadership programmes available to school leaders which were designed to promote excellent educational leadership through improving the quality of the education workforce. The programmes (National Professional Qualification for Middle Leadership (NPQML), National Professional Qualification for Senior Leadership (NPQSL) and National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) are licensed by NCTL to a range of delivery providers i.e. Licensees.

This PIN is to instigate an Early Market Engagement exercise to help NCTL determine the interest, capacity and capability within the market.

Although the exact release date is subject to change, the Early Market Engagement exercise is expected to end with the anticipated release of an Invitation to Tender in July/August 2016.

It is anticipated that this market engagement exercise will incorporate one or more Supplier engagement events for interested parties during June 2016. Further information will be published in due course as an addendum to this PIN.

Additional information: This anticipated requirement may be subject to change as a result of Early Supplier Market Engagement, funding opportunities and changes in governmental priorities.

NCTL will, in due course, consider inviting Bidders to express interest via an Open Procedure within the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU). The Invitation to Tender (ITT) would be launched and managed through the NCTL e-procurement system, REDIMO. Bidders will need to be registered on REDIMO to be able to participate in the procurement. If you are interested in this PIN (and are not already registered on REDIMO) please register your company details on the NCTL e-procurement portal. Information about how to register is published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/national-college-for-teaching-and-leadership/about/procurement.

A Market Engagement event will be held via WebEx on Tuesday, 14 June 2016 1pm. See Attachments for joining instructions.

Please email college.licensing@education.gsi.gov.uk if want to find out more about the NCTL market engagement exercise. Please note this does not equate to a formal expression of interest in any future procurement activity.