The department’s Standards and Testing Agency has been working on a digital version of the Reception Baseline Assessment since 2018, and has appointed a supplier to support its upcoming launch
The Department for Education has signed a potential £20m deal to support the digitisation of the assessment process for all children entering reception class.
First introduced in 2021, the Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) measures the literacy, communication, language, and maths skills of children starting school. The aim is to provide a point from which, once a child reaches the final year of primary education, progress can be reviewed and measured. Nationwide data on schools’ overall performance in supporting progress will be published for the first time in 2028.
A digital version of the RBA process, in which pupils will complete tasks using a touchscreen device, was due to be introduced from the recently stated 2024/25 school year – but this was delayed by a year.
To support the new September 2025 launch date of the digital assessment the DfE – on behalf of its executive agency the Standards and Testing Agency – last week entered into an initial four-year contract with digital transformation specialist Made Tech.
The engagement is intended to assist the department in its work “to deliver and build the digital assessment platforms, including the underlying data platforms” for the new tech-powered RBA platform.
Over the next six months, the supplier will work with the Standards and Testing Agency in the creation of a minimum viable product of the digitised process – expected by April 2025. The deal will then cover ongoing support of the new service until 2028.
The potential £16.5m deal can be extended by a further 12 months, taking the possible total spending to about £19.8m, once VAT is included. However, the deal is a “zero-commitment-to-spend contract, and spending is subject to internal approvals”, the text of the contract says.
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Across the term of the engagement, Made Tech will “work across agile development phases – alongside an established digital team – to deliver defined outcomes and, where appropriate, supply capabilities and/or service provisions to deliver strategic objectives and outcomes for the programmes of work” of the RBA programme.
The contract adds that work on the RBA digital service – which procurement records indicate has been supported by various suppliers – began in 2018.
“The school-facing service passed its alpha GDS (Government Digital Service) assessment in April 2019, and the development of the MVP service commenced private beta in the summer of 2019,” the contract says. “However, before the service can go live, it needs to pass two further GDS gateways. In addition, there are several other technology requirements that the service needs to meet before it can be considered fully operational.”
The beta tool has so far been trialled at only “a few hundred schools… [which] is under 3% of the target” user base of more than 16,000 institutions.
In the coming years, Made Tech will support the DfE in delivering “five main requirements” as the service is rolled out at scale.
The first of these is to enable the delivery of the MVP by April of next year, followed by additional development of the supporting “data platform… ensuring it meets the minimum requirements in readiness for go-live”.
The other role that the supplier will be expected to fulfil during the first year of the contract will be to “ensure that the digital assessment service is robust, scalable and secure – to enable STA to deliver assessments at large scale – and meets testing and assurance standards”.
In the years from 2025 onwards, the agreement will also cover “live service management and maintenance” of the reception assessment tool, while the supplier will also be expected “contribute to wider STA digital transformation work”.
The contract stipulates that the RBA will be the first service launched to schools in a wider suite of “digital assessment” tools.
The supplier will not contribute to the content of the assessment, nor to how schools are trained and guided to implement it.
