Invitation to Tender

Specification for Improvement Adviser Service

BY: / LEARNING AND SKILLS IMPROVEMENT SERVICE (LSIS) / DATE: / April 2011
STATUS: / FINAL / VERSION NO: / 1.0
AUDIENCE: / POTENTIAL TENDERERS
APPROVED BY: / ROB WYE/ROB BENDELOW

This specification is structured under the following headings:

1.INTRODUCTION

2.Requirement

2.1 Sector involvement

3SPECIFICATION

3.1 Programme background

3.2Programme aims

3.3Programme outcomes/impact

3.4Programme outputs

4structure of tenders

5FINANCIAL POSITION, LEGAL TERMS & CONDITIONS, & DATA SECURITY

5.1 Financial Position

5.2 Legal Terms & Conditions (Ts & Cs)

5.3 Data Security

6Consortia

7Price

7.1 Budget breakdown

7.2 Payments

7.3 Pricing transparency

8Payment of Sub-Contractors

9Procurement process timing

10References to further reading

11APPENDIX A: LSIS SCORING REGIME FOR TENDERS

12APPENDIX B: GENERAL INFORMATION

13APPENDIX C: FINANCIAL TEMPLATE

14APPENDIX D: lsis Legal Terms & Conditions

Annex 1: Contract Change Control

Annex 1A: Contract Change Control Form

Annex 2: LSIS Marketing Protocols and Guidelines

Annex 3: Website Development and Content Authoring

ANNEX 4: Programme Reporting and Evaluation

ANNEX 5: LSIS CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

ANNEX 6: Standard Personnel Security Checks

ANNEX 7: Charging for Services

ANNEX 8: Equality and Diversity

1

1.INTRODUCTION

The Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS)is the sector-owned body whichaims to accelerate the drive for excellence in the learning and skills sector, building the sector’s own capacity to design, commission and deliver improvement and strategic change. This will help realise our vision that every learner acquires the skills, knowledge and appetite for learning, living and working and that every provider is valued by their community and employers for their contribution to sustainable social and economic priorities.

Our Corporate Plan for 2010-2013, published in April 2010, sets out our key aims and priority actions fordelivering core improvement principles and engaging the sector in everything we do to make LSIS a truly sector-led organisation. The Corporate Plan is supported by a one year Operational Plan. You can find full details about our Corporate Plan on the LSIS website.

Information about LSIS activities and services for the learning and skills sector is available from the LSIS website.

As a sector-owned public body, LSIS is owned, directed and governed by colleges and independent training providers. More information about the governance structure of LSIS and its board and council is available from the LSIS website.

2.Requirement

The contract will run from 1 August 2011 to 31 March 2012 in the first instance, with the option of extension for up to a maximum of a further two years, subject to successful evaluation, the outcome of annual reviews and the funding being available. Delivery to providers will be expected to commence immediately from 1 August 2011. The expected value of this contract will be £1million, plus VATfor the period August 2011 – March 2012.

LSIS is looking for best value from this contract and the best quality from the days delivered. We would expect a minimum of 1300 delivery days including finance and general advice days.

Note that LSIS is currently scrutinising the day rates paid to advisers and is unlikely to approve any full day rate of more than £700 per day.

The existing contractor is expected to provide a full materials, information, briefing and data hand-over to a new contractor,should the contract be awarded to a new Supplier.

2.1 Sectorinvolvement

This is a pre-requisite for tenders to be considered. The proposed programme delivery model must demonstrate the frontline involvement of Learning Providers. For clarity, this means Providers delivering aspects of the programme (to other Providers).

LSIS refers to this aspect of its strategy as ‘Sector Involvement’. The delivery model must be structured so that 70% (or more) of the delivery value is absorbed by this ‘Sector Involvement’ element.

For clarity, a simple example:Total Tender Price£1,000,000

(Assume all values include VAT)Delivery Model£900,000

Management Fee£100,000= 10%

Total Tender Price£1,000,000= 100%

Supplier Delivery£270,000

Sector Involvement£630,000= 70%

Total Delivery Model£900,000= 100%

Please note: more information about the ‘Management Fee’ (referred to above) is available on page 15 of this document, under the heading of ‘Pricing Transparency’.

3SPECIFICATION

3.1 Programme background

The Improvement Adviser Service (IAS) is a successful programme which has been running since 2006 with delivery previously being contracted to Tribal Education through two contracting rounds. LSIS is now looking to tender the contract once again for the period from 1 August 2011. The successful contractor must continue to develop and manage the current programme in its aims to provide a national network of highly experienced improvement advisers to work alongside individual providers to develop their capacity for improvement.

The programme has already successfully supported more than 600 learning and skills providers to improve their performance.Partnership working with funding and sector representative organisations is a critical feature of the delivery of the service.

We require tenders that will demonstrate an understanding of the issues, concerns and priorities of providers within the further education (FE) system in England; processes and methods of review carried out by the funding bodies and government targets for improvement. We are particularly interested in a contractor who is prepared to analyse the case data, evaluate feedback and then use this to continually reshape and improve the service e.g. in the transfer of good practice and brokering relationships with providers to act as role models.

The scope of the service in 2011-2012 will focus solely on groups of unsuccessfully performing providers i.e:

  • Providers with a success rate Notice to Improve
  • Providers with a finance Notice to Improve
  • Providers found inadequate at inspection.

In addition to this, the contractor must assist the LSIS Regional Team to manage and coordinate around 25 Organisational Health Checks for those providers 2 years or more since their last inspection.

The new service will no longer run across the entire range of performance and will not provide improvement support to those providers who are good and are aspiring to excellence. Support for these providers will be available through LSIS but not on a fully subsidised basis provided through the IAS.

We would wish the new contractor of the IAS to offer innovation and creative ideas designed to promote further self-help, professional development and improvement techniques. LSIS does not want the contract from August 2011 to simply be ‘more of the same’ and identical to the processes, support and procedures that have been in place over the last 5 years. We want ideas to ‘add value’ to the Service e.g:

  • targeted activity for those groups of providers who are perfoming unsuccessfully and who are in most need of support
  • new ideas for engaging with this sector
  • new ways of simplifying the administration of the service to streamline it
  • better ways of working with our key customers and stakeholders
  • closer integration of the IAS to other areas of support offered by LSIS
  • maximising the use of Beacons and High Quality Managers (HQMs)
  • collaborating with regionally delivered support from LSIS
  • creative ideas on how to make the service more customer focussed
  • new approaches to improve performance.

The IAS must use:

  • Innovative solutions – LSIS is looking for the new contractor of the IAS to offer innovative and creative ideas designed to promote further self-help, professional development and improvement techniques.
  • Specialist Advisers – at least 70% of whom are employed within the sector, each of whom has a proven track record within the sector for improving standards of provision and implementing effective and sustainable change.
  • High Quality Managers – a mentoring approach that matches the skills of high-performing managers to the development needs of others.
  • Organisational Health Checks – working with providers to identify key issues, using a SWOT analysis, and giving objective feedback about the organisation, in relation to meeting their current and future strategic requirements. A team of trained senior practitioners, including those drawn from the learning and skills sector, have been trained to undertake this activity alongside the LSIS Regional Development Managers. The contractor will be required to effectively manage all aspects of these arrangements, including referring providers onwards to subsequent LSIS or other support (this would include non-susidised activity).

The role of the Improvement Adviser is to work alongside and support the IAS management team by:

  • identifying and negotiating targets, impact measures, performance indicators and timescales from an improvement action plan
  • supporting the implementation of the plan
  • monitoring the progress in implementing the plan
  • identifying and evaluating the impact of actions using qualitative and quantitative evidence to demonstrate quality improvement
  • suggesting strategies to continuing quality improvement to ensure sustainability.

In most cases referred to the Service, a Lead Improvement Adviser will be required to work alongside the provider management team to develop and co-ordinate a tailored support service which:

  • pays attention to the organisation’s business development needs, and long term sustainability
  • uses additional performance indicators that are specific to organisational goals as drivers for improvement
  • ensures that definitions of quality and priorities for improvement are demand-led and driven by customer experience and satisfaction
  • is capable of responding to strategic change
  • meets regulatory and policy requirements such as the Common Inspection Framework.

3.2 Programme aims

The aims of this programme are to support under-performing colleges and providers to:

  • improve their success rates and inspection outcomes through effective quality processes and action planning
  • develop and embed a culture of continuous and sustainable self improvement
  • improve leadership and management
  • improve governance
  • improve financial management, where applicable.

Tenders will be expected to detail previous experience of supporting providers to implement quality improvement processes across the whole organisation and ensure sustainability for continuity of these processes.

Proposals should include a methodology of how best to meet these aims across a range of support activities to promote value for money, obtaining provider feedback and sharing of good practice both across individual organisations and the sector as a whole. An understanding of how LSIS programmes can be utilised to bring about sustained improvement is expected to be demonstrated within this methodology.

3.3 Programme outcomes/impact

  • provide a rapid response element for the service which will support organisations to make improvements required by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) or to tackle areas of significant underperformance identified by Ofsted
  • timely support to providers who have been issued with a success rate and finance notice to improve
  • A high quality service which is value for money and delivers a minimum of 1300 days including finance and general advice days
  • provide OHCs to a high standard and with quality assured reports and timely follow up
  • provide co-ordinated support by using existing advisers and recruiting more where needed eg financial health. This team must be dedicated, qualified and appropriately experienced and capable of delivering support appropriate to the individual needs of each case
  • tenders will demonstrate an understanding of the range of expertise and knowledge required by consultants in order to provide support to all the types of providerfunded by the SFA. Timescales, rationale and methodology for recruitment, training and costs for this support are expected to be included within the documentation.
  • support LSIS in providing high quality CPD for all advisers.

The FE system is currently responding to many changes in needs and priorities. Tenderers are expected to identify key issues for the IAS over the next year, and the systems and resources that will be provided to ensure that these needs will be supported appropriately. Please note that current projections indicate a caseload of around 100 cases in the period to March 2012. Names and case details are confidential to LSIS at present but broad types could be discussed with successful tenderers.

3.4Programme outputs

The anticipated outputs from this contract are:

The contractor should :

a)Aim to maintain the success rate of support so that 90% or more of cases supported achieve a grade of satisfactory or better at inspection or reinspection. In maintaining the rate of success, it is acknowledged that recent changes in the inspection regime will make this a challenging goal as inspection will focus mainly on the poorly performing; and

b)For financial health cases, establish a baseline for the number of colleges receiving support who have their financial notice to improve (FNTI) lifted within 12 months of the intervention taking place

c)Provide, write, quality assure and edit case studies illustrating the impact of the IAS including examples that illustrate a) and b) above. These should number no fewer than 15 cases a year.

Key Performance Indicators

Programme development and delivery

Create and implement effective and streamlined procedures with no duplication e.g. no overlap with the role of the RDM; seamless programme in the eyes of the provider.

Review procedures each quarter and make recommendations for LSIS to consider for enhanced or simplified methods of dealing with cases.

Development of effective administration systems

To ensure timely and effective support takes place with support commencing no more than 4 weeks after receipt of notification support is required.

Maintenance and monitoring of the adviser website, inconsistencies followed up with advisers after quarterly checks.

Development of timely support

Develop Whole Organisation Plans/Memorandum of Support suited to the needs of the provider with appropriate outcomes/impact identified within 5 working days.

80% adviser match meets client requirement at first matching process within 15 working days of case conference/scoping visit.

Monitoring and review of support

IAS management team monitor the agreement of advisers to clients for 100% of referrals.

All provider support plans monitored by IAS management team and sampled by IAS programme manager.

Identification of the impactof the support given and indication of any further support needed.

Quarterly highlight report of impact identifying client satisfaction, feedback and ways in which change has been brought about following engagement with the IAS.

Self assessment

To identify strengths and areas for improvement and generation of an improvement action plan.

The service will forward to LSIS information to support the service self assessment twice a year.

The IAS management team will ensure the self assessment report is validated as accurate and robust.

LSIS will validate the SAR on discussion with the management team and make changes if applicable.

4structure of tenders

You should structure your proposal against the following headings and in the following order only. Please provide additional documents as appendices of no more than 3 pages. The tender response itself should be no more than 8 sides of A4 size 12 font:

  1. General information about your organisation (see Appendix B)
  2. Experience with Learning Providers (4/5)
  3. Delivery Model (5/5)
  4. Capacity (4/5)
  5. Sector Involvement (4/5)
  6. Equality and Diversity (3/5)
  7. Marketing (2/5)

Scoring Regime: Details of the LSIS scoring regime are included for information (see Appendix A). This will be used by members of the evaluation panel when assessing your tender.

Score Weighting: The various elements of your submission will carry a pre-determined weighting. These are shown alongside each criteria heading (above). For clarity, 3/5 means ‘3 out of 5’. 5/5 is the maximum weighting.

The tender process will be conducted in a manner that is open, fair and transparent.

a)General information about your organisation (see Appendix B). Whilst it is essential for LSIS to receive this ‘general information’, it is not assessed and/or scored.

b)Experience with Learning Providers

Here we (LSIS)areseeking to understand your involvement in delivering programme support to Learning Providers within the Learning and Skills sector. Please give details of:

What experience can your organisation demonstrate in meeting the demands and expectations placed on the service by the sector?

What experience does the organisation have in driving forward quality initiatives in the sector?

How relevant are the expertise and skills of the staff who will be working on this programme, including quality assurance, quality improvement, mentoring and coaching? How will staff be attracted, trained and retained in order to ensure adequate resources are maintained to deliver the service?

Your organisation’s knowledge and skills relating tofinancial health management

Your consortium partners’ knowledge and skills relating to quality improvement, financial health management and Healthy FE(if applicable – you may be tendering without consortium support).

Relevant contracts held by your organisation

Relevant contracts held by your consortium partners (if applicable)

Your organisation’s relevant experience as a sub-contractor (to a lead contractor)

Relevant awards, accreditation and/or inspection resultsreceived by your organisation

Relevant awards, accreditation and/or inspection results received by your consortium partners (if applicable)

c)Delivery model

Here we are seeking to understand how your organisation will deliver this programme and how your provision will look from the recipient’s perspective.Please give details of:

Evidence of targeted activity for those groups of providers who are perfoming unsuccessfully and who are in most need of support

Demonstrable ability to deliver a high quality programme of activity which is value for money and includes a minimum of 1300 advice days. Evidence given providing an appropriate breakdown of these days across the types of support required, based on an analysis of need.

Evidence of how the new service will offer innovative and creative ideas for future development of IAS as described in section 3.1.

Please describe your proposals for each of the following objectives itemised in section 3. Particular attention to detail will be expected regarding the recruitment of appropriate consultants and proven ability to provide quality improvement support to inadequately performing providers.