Tender Summary

STA-0322 Quality Assurance Framework 24-26

Buying Organisation

Department for Education

Contract Value

Unknown

Suitable for SMEs

Yes

Suitable for VCSEs

Yes

Tender Description

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.

Tender categories (products & services required)

Education and training services (CPV 80000000)

Region

United Kingdom (UK)

Buyer Information