Schools Commercial Team Broadband Project

The Department for Education (DfE) is responsible for children's services and education, including early years, schools, higher and further education policy, apprenticeships, and wider skills in England.

Within DfE we operate a Schools Commercial Team with the key focus on providing help, advice and support all 24,000 Schools within England to help them make the best decision. The Schools Commercial Team includes several functions, the Category Teams primary objective is to understand both school requirements and counterpart to that gain a breath of market intelligence to provide schools with access to the best possible routes to market at a given point in time for the procurement requirements.

One of these specific Teams is the ICT Category Team. The scope of this project is to gather current market intelligence on the scope and availability of Broadband and related services which include Cyber Security and Filtering Services specific to school needs and requirements.

Schools are becoming more and more reliant on the internet and technology to provide high standard education to all children within England and to do so they need access to cost effect, reliable and safe technology, and IT services. Within the scope of Broadband services, schools are required to meet minimum cyber security and internet filtering standards. Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2023 Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2023

Our priorities linked to this project are to:

• Engage with the supply market to share the requirements for Meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges which are in place to ensure schools meet their legal requirement for Keeping Children Safe in Education
• Assess what the market can offer to meet the standard requirements as well as any additional benefits
• Understand from the supply market how schools can receive high quality, compliant Broadband and related services in a straightforward, easy to assess manner providing value for money

As such, we would like to understand the service technology available in the market for high-speed fibre broadband and related security and software services, including Cyber Security and Filtering and Monitoring services.

Solutions should be easy to integrate with any existing systems and conform to our security and data protection requirements.

An early market engagement event will be held on Monday 4 December 2023 (anticipated 1300 hrs - 1430 hrs) held virtually over MS Teams. Suppliers should register their interest on Jaggaer, and should book a place on the market engagement event by 1000 hrs on 28th November 2023 by e-mailing …@education.gov.uk - with the subject heading "SCT Supplier Engagement event (December 2023)". Beyond the cut off time you will not be invited to attend the event. Please provide the names and contact email of up to 2 delegates who will represent your organisation at this event.

Additional information:

Attendees will be invited to respond in full to a post-event questionnaire. The market engagement event and the questionnaire document form part of the DfE initial market research in which we are seeking information from a range of providers to inform any future approach and delivery.

Procurement, if taken forward, is expected to open mid-2024, more information on the procurement process will be provided in due course.

This notice is for information only and is not a call for competition.

The Department reserves the right not to enter a formal procurement process and not award contracts. Accordingly, the Authority will not be liable for any bid cost, expenditure, work or effort incurred by a provider in acting on the basis of this PIN.

All future information will be issued to potential providers via the DfE eTendering Portal. Providers can access this system at: https://education.app.jaggaer.com for details of how to register and the terms of free registration.

All information included in this notice is indicative and subject to change.