High Potential Initial Teacher Training and Leadership Development Programme - Early Engagement

The Department for Education (DfE) is exploring options for the future delivery of a high potential initial teacher training and leadership development programme for cohorts starting in academic year 2021/22. We are not constrained by the existing delivery or commercial models.

Over the coming months we will be engaging with key stakeholders, undertaking user research and speaking to potential suppliers. We are keen to gain market insights and understand market capacity, capability and interest in delivering this type of programme before setting our design, delivery and commercial strategies.

Potential suppliers with a strong understanding of teacher recruitment, assessment and job placement; undergraduate and post-graduate initial teacher training; or teacher professional and leadership development are encouraged to participate. Organisations with understanding of graduate recruitment and development are also encouraged to become involved.

We are interested in organisations' views on:

We are planning to engage with organisations through a variety of means including questionnaires, individual meetings and round table events.

The current programme is aimed at recent graduates and career changers with a 2:1 or above (predominantly from Russell Group Universities) who have the potential to be highly skilled teachers and influential classroom leaders and who would be otherwise unlikely to join the profession. Trainees are placed into challenging schools serving low-income communities where they can contribute to creating social mobility opportunities by closing the gap between deprived pupils and their peers.

The existing requirement is to deliver a two-year leadership development programme where trainees receive qualified teacher status (QTS) at the end of Year 1 and gain a Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) at the end of the programme.

The supplier is responsible for:

The programme is delivered through one national (England) prime supplier contract, using a mix of direct delivery and subcontracting. It delivers four cohorts of 1,750 participants on the two-year leadership development programme. The cost of delivering the programme to one cohort is £39m.

Additional information: Organisations that are interested in taking part in this early dialogue should express their interest by emailing highpotential.ITT@education.gov.uk with their contact details by 15 March 2019. Please include the name(s) of interested individuals, the name of the organisation represented along with email and telephone contact details.

Options for delivery are still open for consideration and responses received as part of this exercise may be used to shape the DfE's specification of requirements and scope any resulting procurement process.

Please note that this is not a call to competition and the DfE is not bound to enter into any procurement activity because of it. The DfE is not committing to undertake any formal commissioning activity resulting from this notice although we may use the information gathered via this process to support any future commercial activity.