Invitation to Tender (ITT) for University Benchmarks for Better Social Mobility

The Social Mobility Commission (SMC) monitors progress towards improving social mobility in the UK and promotes social mobility in England. It is an independent statutory body created by an Act of Parliament and is sponsored by the Cabinet Office.

In March 2022, the government published the Inclusive Britain policy paper. It set out the government's actions in response to the recommendations made by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED). The paper highlighted a number of recommendations which overlap with areas of interest for the Social Mobility Commission (SMC), particularly the focus on enhancing social mobility through educational choices.

The SMC has committed to take forward Action 53 of the Inclusive Britain report. It states: "To help disadvantaged students to choose the right courses for them and to boost their employment prospects, the Social Mobility Commission will seek to improve the information available to students about the labour market value of qualifications and, where possible, the impact of those qualifications on social mobility."

To achieve this, the SMC has been working on multiple projects which can help deliver on Action 53. One of these was to publish a report that summarises the evidence base on the labour market outcomes resulting from studying qualifications in both higher (HE) and further education (FE).

The next step is to develop and publish a set of benchmarks for access to universities. The SMC recently published a blog post outlining a proposed idea for these new sets of university benchmarks. The main driver for this project is the need for a set of university benchmarks which can better capture social mobility. We can potentially achieve this by using a single measure of deprivation that provides a fuller picture of the distribution of access. Using this measure we can look at the rates of students from each background who get into each university. This can then be compared to the overall proportion of students who meet the university entry requirements. By combining these two measures, we could potentially identify if there are subgroups of the student population that have greater chances of access to certain universities compared to other subgroups.

Bidders must submit their Bids before 4pm on 20 November 2023. All Bids must be submitted to contact@socialmobilitycommission.gov.uk. Failure to return Bids by the time and due date or in the required format may disqualify Bidders from consideration.