Delivery Approach. The DFE’s delivery approach is designed to separate the activities of the Delivery Partner, the Evaluation Partner and the Centres for Excellence. The DFE Contractor, as the Department’s Delivery Partner, will research, develop, implement, support evaluate and disseminate high quality basic maths teaching approaches that focus on students aged 16+ with low prior attainment. Whilst DFE will select and grant fund the Centres for Excellence, they will be operationally managed by the Delivery Partner. The Delivery Partner will be responsible for training, mentoring and supporting the Centres for Excellence to trial the approaches within their institution and maths network. The Delivery Partner will monitor and review the Centres for Excellence to establish and maintain exemplary standards of provision to meet both local and national maths priorities. The Delivery Partner will support the Centres for Excellence to network and disseminate the new or improved ways of teaching maths to those aged 16 and over. The Delivery Partner will also commission an Evaluation Partner to conduct an ongoing, independent and objective evaluation to determine whether the new and improved teaching approaches being trialled are having an impact on the quality of teaching and improving outcomes for students. The Delivery Partner will contract with an independent Evaluation Partner. The specification of work, costs and selection of the Evaluation Partner will be agreed with the Department. This should be a separate organisation to that of the Delivery Partner and the Delivery Partner and Evaluation Partner shall make clear as to whether any conflicts of interest may exist between the organisations. The Evaluation Partner will not be responsible for evaluating the Delivery Partner or the Centres for Excellence. Rather, they will have responsibility for evaluating the impact of the trials of the new teaching approaches on the quality of teaching and attainment. The Evaluation Partner will support the Delivery Partner to design robust research methods for the trials of the teaching approaches and will provide an independent, ongoing analysis of whether the teaching approaches being trialled are having an impact. The Evaluation Partner will collect, identify and analyse on an ongoing basis quantitative (such as attainment and attendance data) and qualitative data (such as teacher surveys) as proxy measures to determine whether the new approaches are enhancing the quality of post-16 basic maths teaching. To determine the impact of the new approaches of post-16 basic maths teaching; the evaluation partner will undertake robust impact evaluation of trials which may, if appropriate, make use of randomised control trials or quasi-experimental methods. Where interventions are being trialled, the evaluation partner will be expected to include a control group (i.e. a group of learners undertaking the same provision, but using a standard method of delivery rather than the newly designed one) to compare against the learners receiving the new approaches. The Evaluation Partner will only be concerned with whether the teaching approaches are impacting on the quality of teaching. They will not be responsible for directly evaluating the programme, the Delivery Partner or the DFE more broadly. The DFE has selected 21 Centres for Excellence through a competitive grant application process. The Centres for Excellence will be directly grant funded and grant managed against their conditions of grant funding by the DFE. Full information relating to the guidance and selection process undertaken can be found here: ▇▇▇▇▇://▇▇▇.▇▇▇.▇▇/government/publications/basic-maths-centres-for-excellence-application Whilst the Delivery Partner did not have any role in the initial selection process of the Centres, they may be required, if necessary, to manage the selection of additional or replacement Centres in the future. The Delivery Partner’s costings are based upon supporting and managing the 21 Centres for Excellence in place. The selected Centres, their networks and the Delivery Partner will work together closely. The role of the Centres for Excellence will be to support the Delivery Partner to research, develop and trial the maths teaching approaches. The Centres will be supported by the Delivery Partner through research, good practice case studies, high quality resources, training, mentoring and ongoing evaluation. The Centres will develop existing or create new Maths Networks as a platform for sharing and fully embedding best practice to improve maths across their network. Networks may be geographic or non-geographic in nature. The Delivery Partner will support the Centres for Excellence in building and managing this network. DFE expects this network to cover a minimum of 10 institutions, covering a range of different provider types. Over the Initial Term of the Contract, DFE expect the programme to indirectly reach and enhance maths provision for more than 50,000 learners. To ensure the programme covers the breadth of the country, at least one Centre for Excellence has been selected per English region, with no more than three Centres for Excellence per any region. Below is the eligibility criteria that the DFE used to select the Centres for Excellence.
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