Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what criteria her Department uses to allocate funding to the voluntary and charitable sector; and if she will publish those criteria and any scoring system that they support.

The Department’s grant and procurement policy are aligned and adhere to the recently published Government Grant Standards and the Commercial Operating Standards. Both determine that the Department will compete by default - including in relation to VCSE organisations. All commercial approaches contribute to achieving the departmental objectives for education, children’s services, higher and further education policy, apprenticeships and wider skills in England, and equalities and are underpinned by the following principles:

• Best value for government;
• Accountable management of outcomes/outputs;
• Providing sufficient information about the tender / grant opportunity to the; market to enable interested bidders to apply
• Impartially assessing each bid / application against the same criteria;
• Selecting the winning bidder on merit by reference to set criteria; and
• Active contract and grant management.

Specific criteria are determined in relation to what is being procured or granted but support the principles above. In all cases, VCSE providers will need to respond to the Department’s selection and award criteria provided in the relevant documentation which is published on Contracts Finder or on Funding Central.

There is no specified scoring system as this is in part determined by the criteria, but a common system used for the majority of competitions is:

Score 5: excellent evidence

Score 4: strong evidence

Score 3: good evidence (often used as the minimal acceptable score)

Score 2: partial evidence

Score 1: poor evidence

Score 0: no evidence/question not answered.