RFP - Selection of firms for conducting ITK Impact Assessment for Students in Government Schools in Tamil Nadu

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About the Organization

The Government of Tamil Nadu accords the highest priority to providing quality education to the citizens of tomorrow. Education is the gateway to a better future for today’s children and it is the formative years of school education that lay the foundation for their future wellbeing. It is the primary objective of the state to provide quality, accessible and inclusive education to all its children, and to this end, the government has provided the highest budgetary allocation of Rs.32,599.54 crore for the year 2021-22 for school education.

The focus of the Government in School Education will be to ensure that enrolment of all school age children is achieved in total, to ensure complete retention of all enrolled children right upto the secondary level, to bring drop-outs to zero, to improve the learning outcomes among children as appropriate to their age and level, to empower teachers by effective and useful training, to leverage the power of technology in the teaching-learning process, to provide foundational literacy and numeracy skills to all students, to improve basic amenities in schools, and to equip children with new-age skills and to ensure their safety and wellbeing, especially given the new-normal set by COVID. The various Directorates under the Department of School Education are responsible for fulfilling the aforementioned objectives of the Government. The main wings of the Department are the Directorate of Elementary Education, the Directorate of School Education, Directorate of Matriculation Schools, Samagra Shiksha, Directorate of Non-Formal and Adult Education and are supported by organisations such as State Council for Education, Research and Training(SCERT), Directorate of Government Examinations, Directorate of Public Libraries, Teachers Recruitment Board and the Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation.

About the Proposal

The “Illam Thedi Kalvi” is an initiative launched for students studying from Classes 1 to 8 by the Department of School Education, Tamil Nadu, to bridge the learning gaps/losses among students (Classes 1-8) due to lack of access to structured education during a pandemic and to mainstream Out of School Students (OoSC) A 3 tier structure is being set up at the State, District & School levels. The Committee members at the State level shall be part of the planning and implementation of the initiative. Initially, the initiative was implemented as a pilot project in 12 districts and scaled to the remaining 26 districts based on the learnings obtained from the same.

Currently, ITK is implemented by about 2+ lakh selected volunteers in 2 lakh+ centres across 92,000 habitations of the state. The volunteers impart daily lessons for Classes 1 to 8 in Tamil, English, Maths, Science, Social Science, and Environmental Studies after school for 1.5 Hrs (between 5 pm and 7 pm) of remedial teaching. Volunteers are identified through robust selection mechanisms, trained, and placed in centres in their habitation, working closely with the school teachers and School Management Committees for smooth implementation. In every habitation, students are expected to ease into regular learning and also ITK centres function in such a way to reinforce what students learn during regular school hours. The State believes this initiative has achieved a structured and communityoriented mission to ensure drastic and rapid improvement of learning outcomes among the Government School students.

 The overall goal of the initiative is to enhance the longer-term engagement and sustainability of ITK Centres & Volunteers to support other key interventions to be implemented by the state education department and to continue the momentum of volunteerism, especially among women volunteers to create continuous and sustainable impacts on the public education.

Key Objectives

A: Students Participation and Learning Outcomes

• To evaluate student's progress and learning competencies in Tamil, Maths, and English, for Classes 3, 5, 8 and student’s improvement in reading and writing skills.
• To assess the impact of the ITK initiative on the existing school systems in terms of the effect on retention, absenteeism, enrolment, etc. Component

Community Participation and Volunteer Empowerment

• To assess and understand the key factors which led to volunteer and community participation as well as continued engagement through Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), School Management Committee (SMC) along with Education department bodies of State, District and Block level committees.
• To study and document the perceptions of volunteer community and parent's engagement and empowerment, specifically for women volunteers.

Scope of Work

The firm(s) selected through this RfP is expected to deliver their services for assessing the impact of the Illam Thedi Kalvi initiative for students of Classes 1 to 8 as mentioned below:-

• Component A is mainly to assess and evaluate the learning outcomes of students from Class 3, Class 5 and Class 8 for the subjects Tamil, English and Mathematics. For this, NAS 2021 data is to be taken as baseline data and the Bidder would be required to conduct the Midline and Endline assessment. Bidder to design and develop the student questionnaire as identical to the NAS 2021 research tool. The State Education Departmentmay provide model question papers for the bidder’s reference at request. Please refer to the link below to download the NAS Assessment Framework.
• Link to the NAS Assessment Framework
• Component B can be a qualitative component to understand the initiative’s intended outcomes in terms of community participation along with volunteer engagement and empowerment which contributed to the successful implementation of the initiative and also strengthened the existing Government structures

Eligibility

• The Bidder should be registered as a company/ LLP in India as per the Company Act/ LLP Act and should have been in existence for a minimum of five years as of March 31, 2022.
• The Bidder should have a minimum average turnover of at least Rs.3 crore (audited) in the previous five financial years (FY 2017-18, FY 2018-19, FY 2019-20, FY 2020-21, FY 2021-22).
• The Bidder shall submit proof of having conducted at least three impact assessment studies that covered at least 10,000 children of 5 districts in any Statein India (AY 2015-16, AY 2016-17, AY 2017-18, AY 2018-19, AY 2019-20, AY 2020 -21, AY 2021-22)
• The Bidder should have carried out at least two impact assessment projects in the education sector in the area of impact assessment in any of the past 7 years (AY 2015-16, AY 2016-17, AY 2017-18, AY 2018-19, AY 2019-20, AY 2020-21, AY 2021-22).
• The Bidder should not have been blacklisted by the Government of India/ Tamil Nadu/ other State Governments in India or Undertakings/ entities under/owned by these Governments as on the bid submission date.

How to Apply

The Bidder must submit: (a) Technical Proposal (b) Financial Proposal Bid Due Date: 12.10.2022 at 02:00 PM

• The proposal, its contents and all correspondence and documents shall be in English.
• The proposals shall remain valid for 180 days from the last date of bid submission.
• The completed Proposal must be delivered at the submission address on or before the Bid Due Date (BDD). No Proposal shall be accepted after the closing time of Proposals.
• The fee should be quoted in the financial bid only, in case found in the Technical bid that will be rejected.
• Prior to the evaluation of proposals, the Authority will determine whether each proposal is responsive to the requirements of the RfP at each evaluation stage. the Authority may, at its sole discretion, reject any Proposal that is not responsive hereunder. The Authority reserves all rights to accept or reject any proposal without assigning any reason.
• The firm shall submit two (2) copies of the Technical Proposal (one original and one copy) and one copy of the Financial Proposal. The Technical and Financial Proposals must necessarily be 'Hard Bound' separately and all pages serially numbered. 'Hard Bound' implies such binding between two covers through stitching whereby it will not be possible to replace any paper without disturbing the document. In case of any discrepancy between the original and the copy of the technical proposal, the contents as per the original will only be considered. Documents received without serial numbering and without a binding may be rejected without assigning any reason.

Submission Address:

State Project Director,

Samagra Shiksha, DPI Campus, College Road,

Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600006.

For more information please check the Link

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Tags Education and Education Technology (edtech) Skill Development Others