The government is looking to spend nearly £4 million on catch-up resources for teachers to use, including diagnostic tests to spot pupils’ learning gaps.

Providers will be able to bid for £3.9 million to create in-class resources in various formats and diagnostic tests, hosting resources on a publicly accessible platform and supporting teachers in understanding the knowledge and skills needed by pupils to make up lost learning time.

Coronavirus: Forget ‘crowd-pleasing catch-up gimmicks’, warn heads

Related: Catch-up tsar wants teachers to increase learning time

Sir Kevan Collins: Who is the new Covid catch-up tsar?

“We envisage that the diagnostic tests will be downloadable by teachers and completed between teacher and student,” a pre-tender notice published by the Department for Education today says.

Coronavirus: Resources to help pupils catch up on lost learning

It describes how the diagnostic tests would support teachers in “enabling them to identify next steps and assign a package of resources to help pupils resolve gaps in knowledge and address misconceptions”, although it adds that the range of ideas proposed is not exhaustive and will be subject to further development.

The DfE is holding a market engagement event next Wednesday that will be conducted remotely via Microsoft Teams.

It says that the £3.9 million tender is an estimate based on a potential contract term of 15 months (a three-month implementation period followed by a one-year delivery period).

This week, headteachers stressed that is important to focus on “quality of education” over “crowd-pleasing arguments about quantity” when considering plans for Covid catch-up support.