Advantage Schools - ICT Managed Service

Description

Advantage Schools encompasses circa 6.540 pupils cross 10 sites.  The Trust is a mix of Primary and Secondary settings and is the result of a merger in September 2024 of The Shared Learning Trust and Advantage Schools.
The vision of the Trust is to provide all children with the highest quality of teaching of an excellent academic curriculum, which enables them to become highly educated and to be full and active participants of society.
We do not make exceptions in our high aspirations.  The merger of The Shared Learning Trust with Advantage Schools came about because the ten schools agree that:
•	Every child should benefit from a broad, ambitious, knowledge-rich curriculum, taught by highly skilled teachers.
•	Every school must have a well-designed and well-sequenced curriculum, which ensures children build knowledge in a broad range of subjects before going on to specialise after the age of 16.
•	Every child must be taught this broad and ambitious curriculum in a school with high expectations and strong standards of behaviour.
•	All children can and will benefit disproportionately from being taught in this family of schools.
The Trust is taking the opportunity to go to the market to identify the best innovative and forward-looking partner to support them in the delivery and development of their ICT provision over the next five years.  The new service will be fully out-sourced and begin on the 27th July 2026
This procurement includes (but may not be limited to) the items listed below.  
•	A core managed service, management of all ICT against an agreed SLA
•	24 x 7 x 365 remote monitoring and management
•	A Service Desk, available 50 weeks a year including out of hours access
•	Local staffing which suppliers deem necessary to deliver the service and meet the SLA requirements - 50 weeks onsite in schools and the Head Office
•	Strategic advice and direction to the Trust regarding ICT
•	Responsibility for design, specification, installation, and management of all ICT infrastructure
•	Supply of goods and services based on an agreed Best Value approach
•	Management of 3rd parties where relevant to the ICT support
•	Relevant monitoring, management, patching
•	Regular performance reporting
•	CPD and training - digital skills and curriculum as necessary
•	There is an expectation that the provider will support and/or drive innovation
•	Maintain technical documentation
•	Maintain operational documentation, for example inventory management and risk registers
•	Collective partnership targets aligned to the Trust objectives
•	Suppliers may be required to deliver a range of technology and change management projects in addition to the providing the core managed service.
Suppliers should note the following:
•	The Trust will provide a standard contract as part of the ITT Pack 
•	There will be a requirement for TUPE from existing supplier and the Trust.