The “quality” of new Covid catch-up resources for teachers is being risked by a government tendering process that may “discriminate” against some suppliers, ministers have been warned.

And the Department for Education has also been criticised for not including “impact and improved outcomes” as a key performance indicator (KPI) for the multi-million-pound project.

Last month Tes revealed that the government’s budget for school Covid catch-up resources - including sequenced lessons, formative assessment and workbooks - had more than trebled, to a maximum of £15 million.

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The DfE said the in-class resources should cover English, maths and science at key stages 1, 2, and 3 as a “minimum”.

They should also be “freely available”, “accessible on demand” and “non-mandatory”, and hosted on a “suitable, digital platform”, provided and maintained by the chosen supplier, the department said.

Concerns over Covid catch-up teaching resources

But Caroline Wright, director-general of the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA), has now warned that some organisations may be barred from bidding because the government has set “unrealistic deadlines” for them to meet the terms of the contract.

This could result in a “smaller potential pool of bidders”, which could, in turn, impact on the “quality” of catch-up resources produced for teachers, Ms Wright said.

In a letter to the DfE sent on 20 April, seen by Tes, BESA set out a number of issues with the contract, including the “tight tender timescale”, which it said “may potentially discriminate or prohibit commercial publishers from bidding”.

This is because of the time involved in seeking permission to hand the DfE the intellectual property (IP) rights to the catch-up resources, BESA said.

The association warned that in order to comply with the terms of the contract, suppliers would first need to contact “any third-party providers who may have contributed to the assets: authors; advisors; illustrators, etc”, asking them to forego their IP rights to the resources while they are on the “central platform”.

“This would be exceptionally time-consuming and unlikely to be possible to achieve in a short time frame,” the letter said.

BESA also warned that the government included “no mention of impact and improved outcomes as part of the KPIs outlined in the tender documents”.

The association therefore called on the DfE to conduct an “independent evaluation” of the project, including “educational attainment and industry impact”, before committing any further public funds to its expansion.

Other points in the letter included:

• The tender documents make “no mention” of restricting access to the resources to schools in England, which BESA said could “damage UK edtech and publishing exports internationally”.
• The government’s provision of free resources may impact on the wider educational publishing industry, with a reduced market leading to “innovative commercial publishers” leaving the UK.
• Questions remain over the purpose of the new catch-up resources tender, given that suppliers such as Oak National Academy and BBC Bitesize “are already offering an expansive free service”.

Ms Wright told Tes: “The tender in its current format will potentially make it harder for commercial publishers to bid because the short timescales will make it exceptionally hard for publishers to seek agreement on any IP or royalty agreements that are in place for existing content.

“If commercial publishers are unable to meet these timescales, commercial providers will be prevented from submitting existing resources and will instead be required to produce new materials or not bid at all.

“Again the timescale of less than three months is less than ideal in terms of creating, testing and producing high-quality resources.

“Both of these factors, a smaller potential pool of bidders due to unrealistic deadlines for IP clearance, and the short timescale for creating quality resources could affect the range of suppliers bidding for the tender and potentially the quality of the resources that bidders are able to produce within those timescales.”

The DfE said it was carefully considering the points raised by BESA and would respond to clarification questions through the online portal.

Tes is part of Tes Global, which runs the Tes Resources platform