Accelerator Fund - Capability building

THIS IS AN INVITATION TO AN EARLY MARKET ENGAGEMENT EVENT A government funded initiative to support literacy & numeracy programmes to prepare for large scale delivery. The purpose of this Early Engagement Notice is to inform the market about a forthcoming market engagement event relating to an imminent contract opportunity to deliver capability building support services as part of the wider Accelerator Fund initiative from autumn 2022. Background The Accelerator Fund is a Government funded initiative which seeks to support and encourage schools to access well-evidenced programmes, predominantly focused on literacy and numeracy, by growing a pipeline of programmes with a view to scaling-up those that demonstrate a good evidence base. It aims to ensure there is a quality supply of programmes that can be confidently and easily accessed by schools and to spark a behavioural change in how schools spend their disadvantage funding. For these purposes, “schools” includes early years and post-16 education settings. The key objectives of the Accelerator Fund are to: A. Increase the pipeline of evidence-based programmes by investing in: evidence-based practice that is not yet formed into a ‘programme’ and developing that into programmes, with the support of schools; testing the feasibility of a programme’s delivery model to identify potential benefits and move to the next stage of the pipeline; and efficacy trials to evaluate the impact of existing programmes on pupil attainment. B. Scale-up existing programmes by generating more evidence of their impact at a larger scale through effectiveness trials; offering grants to subsidise the cost to schools to encourage take up, providing direct grants to support programme development for scale; and providing market and capability building support. C. Support schools to choose evidence-based programmes, focused on school engagement and supporting schools to make informed decisions about what programme or trial opportunities they may take part in. The Requirement This contract opportunity focuses on one element of objective B only (as set out above) - specifically business development support . Even the most promising programmes may need support to strengthen areas of weakness or to overcome barriers to scaling . As part of the Accelerator Fund, the procured organisation will work with programme teams - i.e. leaders/deliverers of literacy and numeracy programmes - to address these challenges. This work can have a programmatic focus, for example improving the training model, or an organisational one, for example, advising on how best to market the programme. It may be needed where the delivery team lacks expertise and is willing to build its own capacity. This work will support programmes to grow their reach sustainably, while maintaining quality.