Education & Learning and Inclusion Services

Suffolk County Council would like to hear from organisations offering education caseload management systems (CMSs) and associated services to help gauge the likely level of interest in the current market and to gain an understanding of the systems available. Suffolk County Council's Children & Young People's services (CYP) currently use 4 core CMSs, alongside a small number of services that record partially outside of a structured management system using shared drives and spreadsheets, to support the delivery of services and statutory education functions across the directorate. Suffolk County Council has approximately 110,000 students in it's 324 schools (1 nursery, 253 primary, 2 middle, 44 secondary, 2 16+, 12 special and 10 PRU). Two thirds of schools in Suffolk are academies. The system also processes around 15,000 early year children. About 500 people use the current system around the County.
The Council's Education & Learning and SEND & Inclusion management information solution is currently provided by Capita One Education. During the life of the contract, it has been updated, had additional modules added and more recently in 2020 moved to a cloud hosted environment. CYP currently has a 5-year contract with Capita which is due to expire on 31st March 2025.
The key Children's service areas included within the scope of Suffolk County Council's requirements for an Education & Learning and SEND & Inclusion Management solution are as follows: • Child record data • Education Setting Data • Early Years • Admissions • Specialist Education Placements • Transport • GIS integration • Attendance • EHCPs • Interventions • Free School Meals • Elective Home Education • Children Missing Education • Exclusions • Licenses • Virtual school • Census • Attainment • Governors • Music • School place planning • Case management Any systems procured by Suffolk County Council would need to be compatible with the existing technical infrastructure. The following services would therefore also be required of the solution: • The supply of open APIs for the system • Data integration with third party systems • Cloud hosted system • Portals (customer/ public facing, professional and third party) • UK data hosting • Access to data and data warehouse • Secure data transfer Please note that the issuing of this PIN is for due diligence and does not constitute any commitment by Suffolk County Council to undertake a subsequent procurement exercise. Should Suffolk County Council choose to partake in further Soft Market Engagement (SME) with suppliers following the issue of this PIN and questionnaire, additional functionality requirements resulting from a full requirement capture will be disclosed. Questionnaire Introduction This exploratory exercise will allow the council to engage with suppliers through the use of a questionnaire detailing Suffolk County Council's high level system requirements. Following a consideration and review of responses to this questionnaire Suffolk County Council may conduct further SME exercises with interested suppliers. Please be advised that a response to this questionnaire does not guarantee an invitation to participate in any subsequent SME testing or procurement. The completion of this exercise does not commit Suffolk County Council to award any contract or enter into any contractual agreement. All responses to this questionnaire are made at the supplier's own risk and cost; Suffolk County Council is not liable for any expenditure, work, or effort incurred by any supplier participating in this exercise. Responses received from suppliers will be treated as commercially confidential and are for information only. Instructions to respond Responses to the following questionnaire are to be submitted through Microsoft Forms by 21st January 2022. https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=7GqcEEZQlUqPPIT2O6GK9GRqADqha41CnAkdHjkZpoRUMTAyWk00RzVCRFBBQzBYSzFYQTBROUVWQiQlQCN0PWcu