We're pleased to have you all here and hopefully we're able to give you some really useful information for those of you interested in this particular Kaupapa.
My name's Christina. I'm just going to run through a little bit of housekeeping about how this query will run and then we'll get stuck into some of the details ka pai. So like I said I’m Christina.
I work with the programme, providing advice and support on how we're designing these services to make sure that they work for all students and whānau and with a particular focus on ākonga and whānau Māori and our Pacific learners and whānau as well.
With me in this briefing, and they will introduce themselves when it comes up to them, but we will have Tracy Mellor. Tracy is leading the attendance service reforms and she'll be talking about what it is that we're looking for and through this briefing. And we also have Andrew MacLean, Andrew's our procurement lead. So he's going to be talking through the procurement process and information about.
There. OK. As you can see from the participant numbers, we've got a large number of attendees today over 100.
Because of that, we're using the webinar functionality so this is not a standard teams meeting. It's set up as a webinar.
So there are a few things that that means. We would love you to use your camera if you can so we can see you. It's much nicer talking to faces than screens. So kia ora, and ka pai, if you can't, sometimes data usage and things like that don't allow us to, that's OK.
Microphones have been disabled.
So you can't ask verbal questions.
That's just simply because of the number of people we have in the room ka pai. We do want your questions. And so there is a Q&A  function at the top of your screen.
Please use that function to ask any questions you like throughout the briefing, Andrew and I will be monitoring those questions. So during the call at all.
We will publish the questions as we go through them so that everybody can see what questions have been asked.
Where we can, we will answer questions verbally during this briefing.
Please rest assured that every question that is asked will be answered as part of the written Q&A and we will post there after the briefing so everyone will have access to those questions and those answers.
That includes any questions that we answer verbally during this week.
OK.
This this meeting is being recorded and it will be posted so people will have access to this information after the screen.
If you have got questions after the briefing finishes.
We want to hear those as well. Please use the process described in the RFP documents for asking questions. They will all be answered ka pai.
So that's kind of our housekeeping.
The structure of this meeting we're going to first talk about the key features of the new attendance services.
There will be an overview of the procurement process.
And we've got time at the end to hopefully answer some of the questions that you're asking through the Q&A function.
Just on the Q&A function, please don't panic if you don't see your question published immediately.
And there are two of us at the scenes checking through those questions and publishing them if there's lots of questions, it might take us a little while. We will get there. And so it's not that it hasn't been received. We're just working through them. Ka pai I can see there are still some more people joining so. Oh, look at that. We're up to 114.
Halfway right. I'm going to stop talking now and I'm going to hand over to my colleague Tracy, who's going to talk to you about the features of the new attendance service.
Kia ora, kia ora, kei te pai. So I'm Tracy Mellor. I'm leading the work to reform the attendance services. As Christina said earlier, I'm going to talk you through now the key features of the service and really what we're looking for in terms of the applications and tenders that you're considering making and submitting to us. So the idea of this is for us to be able to really focus for you on some of the things that are most significant.
For you, I'm really just talking through the information that's already in the tender documents, but I'll try and give you a little bit more of a context for those where that's relevant.
So let's go through it. So some of the key features for this service. And so we are targeting chronically absent and non-enrolled students. We're primarily focused on students who are legally obligated.
To attend school of some sort, which primarily means students in Years 1 to 11.
There would be some exceptions for students, for example, who are 16, but in year 12, so we're not excluding people for those reasons, but...
You know, if they if they are legally obliged to be at school, then they're entitled to get access to this service if they're referred to it and from a service delivery perspective, we're expecting each service to deliver case management support and any other services to any student that's been referred to them. So they'll be referred by.
A school, if they are chronically absent, they'll be revered by the ministry. If they're non enrolled. So there will be criteria that allow and guide when they are referred. Once they're referred to you as a provider, it's expected that you will deliver those services. We also want to be really clear that.
That's for all students learning in all settings, so that includes students learning Te Reo Māori and in Kaupapa Māori settings, whether in English, medium or other English medium schools or other kura.
So we want to be really clear about that from the beginning. We're also looking for comprehensive range of services. So we're saying case management function is the core of what we're looking for. But we are also expecting the providers to provide a range of services through the catchment. I'm not going to read everything off the screen here. We will be sharing this.
Presentation with you after this briefing and the information is already in there. But just to be clear, we're looking for that comprehensive range of services, but we expect you to be able to adjust that as you need to.
We are very strongly at the view that the attendant service providers need to work collaboratively with all of the schools in the catchment and so if you, and particularly with us, So, if a student has been referred by a school or you're working with a school to get the student enrolled or re enrolled with them.
And we're expecting you to work closely with that school.
We also have a strong emphasis on working with all local government agencies and other services and local groups that could improve those outcomes and you will see in this slide and in the RFP documents an increased focus on.
Interagency Multi Agency forums that we'll be looking for the attendance service providers to work with and support.
Just a note that we do have some  schools that we will be contracting with to deliver some services for themselves. That's out of scope for this procurement process. The contracts under this process will be adjusted accordingly, and to the extent that a school is going to do some of the work themselves. So that will all be worked through by the time contracts are finalised.
And one contract for each of the 84 defined catchment areas. So we are aware that some providers may be interested in applying for more than one and to deliver services in more than one. And if you do that, you can organise your services in that way. But we will expect there will be a contract for each catchment, and we will expect the service to be delivered according to the needs of their community in that catchment area.
We do have a standard funding allocation model that we've used to allocate the funding and you've got the information from the RFP about what the indicative volumes and funding is. And you will see they're not all the same. We've taken account of geographical isolations. So the average amount of funding.
I have estimated volume will vary, but we know that we've done that intentionally to address those geographically isolated places.
We do expect that volumes are going to increase over the next 2 years. So the total funding here you'll have seen in the media, we're quite clear that we have.
We we we're, we're funding the capacity to take around double the number of students that are currently referred to attendance services, but we don't expect that we'll get there immediately.
And we expect that volume to increase over the two years and the funding will be allocated regardless. So if if if a provider has less, less volumes than.
Than they funded for, we expect them to spend more time with those students and also to deliver a broader range of other services and vice versa. So we expect you to accommodate your services there are there was changes in volumes by adjusting the mix of the services.
We are requiring all services or and particularly the case management activities to be recorded and reporting using our case management system. Those of you who are current providers will be pleased to know we're in the process of replacing the current one. And so we'll have a new system in place by the time these contracts are in place.
I also just want to draw to your attention, we've provided as much information as we can and so that you've got what you need to prepare an application or a tender.
But you'll be aware that the budget was only approved in in May. Not all of the detail of our requirements are finalised and we're still developing some of that. So to the extent that that's done over the next few months, we'll keep you informed as as that's kind of appropriate. And but I would also say we are very committed to working with.
Identifying what works and adjusting services accordingly. So we will expect to continue to develop the the the service requirements and so on even during the life of the contract. And we're looking for providers who are keen to engage with us on that journey.
And so the outcomes, I think it's fairly explanatory, but we're looking for increased attendance, whether that's at a school or another approved educational pathway and by all students that have been referred to the service.
We've established a framework that describes the key requirement for all providers, and that will be that's in the service specification that you've seen, and it will also be in the draft contract documents that will come out fairly soon.
And within that framework, we are looking for you to use innovative and flexible approaches. So we don't want to prescribe in detail what you do.
What we do want is to know what you do so that we can understand what's working and we can work across the country to adjust service delivery where we learn something new. So that's that collaboration with providers that we're looking for as we move forward. You'll also see in the the application RFP documents. We've included some aspirational outcomes targets. We're also working on some.
Probably less demanding outcome targets that will be established as service levels. They will be included in the draft contracts that will come out early in July.
Catchment, we have already given you those, so you should have access to those so you can see exactly what's in each catchment
that you might be looking to for the contracts that you're looking to apply for. So in there you've got a map of the schools. You've got an indication how many schools we think are in scope for that catchment.
That includes.
And all of the  schools that may be may be in scope. There may be some variations to that as we get towards the end of the process and it gives you the forecast and the range of what we think the estimated case volumes and an indicative kind of contract value.
Note that those are based on the initial term of the contract, which is just over 2 years rather than there a single.
A single year.
Can I also just note we have been getting a little bit of feedback that there are some kind of minor errors and details kind of that just need to still be adjusted in the catchments before they've finalised. We're working through at the moment, how many of those we seem to be getting and whether to make changes now or or or later. But any such changes will be addressed before the contracts are rewarded. We don't expect any of those to make any significant difference to the contract as a whole.
And so that's really what I wanted to talk about and that's the general sense of what we're aiming to achieve. As I say, there's a lot more detail in the documents that you've got. And when Andrew has talked you through the procurement process, we'll be happy to answer any questions. And I can see 1 or 2 of those are starting to come through already. So I'm going to hand over to Andrew.
Who is going to talk you through the procurement process?

Thanks, Tracy.
What I want to do is just take you through some of the key features of the process. Once again, this is just recapping what's in the documents already as well. 

This is an open process, so we're inviting responses from schools, Iwi organisations, NGOs and other organisations, so everybody's clear on the responses and respondents that we're looking to enter engagement with. The second point I wanted to cover, and this relates to a question that came in a few minutes ago as well. Yes, we are seeking responses for individual catchments. So if you are looking to respond for two catchments then we are looking for two response forms please. I appreciate that means there will be some generic content each one and there'll be a repetition of the, front information detail around your organisation, but in most of the questions, there's an expectation from our side that you'll be picking up and reflecting catchment specific features in your response to that particular question. And we'll be doing an evaluation at individual catchment levels. So that is why we are seeking individual responses. As you may have also picked up, we are running 2 parallel processes. Schools as crown entities aren't able to participate in our traditional requests for the proposal process. So we're running 2 parallel processes. Schools are applying by an application process and the documentation for that has been advertised and made available to schools on the Ministry website. Other organisations are applying through an open RFP process, which was advertising on GETS. Both processes are the same, and while one's called an RFP and one's called an RFA, everything else is the same. Same requirement, same timeframes, same evaluation approach, and the evaluators who will be evaluating responses to specific catchments will be the same evaluators. And then once that application /evaluation process has been worked through we’ll is taking the highest scoring response for each catchment education, regardless of organisation type.  So hopefully that provides some clarity around. I’ve touched on the evaluation process a little bit already, but just a couple of points I wanted to highlight. So in the document and also at the top of the response form question section you'll notice that there's some preconditions. Those are preconditions that Responses need to meet to be able to go through to full evaluation, so it's just to  highlight the importance of being able to give a clear, accurate answer to those preconditions. If you are not able to meet one or more of those preconditions  your proposal won’t be taken any further in the evaluation process. We’ve touched on already the evaluation is being undertaken at an individual catchment level. We therefore have also we've a lot of evaluation teams - 84, one for each catchment who will be evaluating the responses for that that catchment. Once the evaluations have been undertaken, the individual evaluator scores will be rolled up and there will be a moderation exercise with the evaluation team for each catchment agreeing a Team score for that response or that catchment. If we do need presentations to support the evaluation process, then we'll be looking at holding those during the moderation stage and we will provide notification at that time. We anticipate we'll be able to give you 5-7 days’ notice of those . We will communicate to you on that process of the time. We are planning to release the draught contract in the week commencing December in July. There will be two different forms of the agreement. One will be for schools which will be in the form of a funding agreement and the other will be a service agreement for other organisations.  To highlight the point Tracy has already covered around the strong outcomes focus in the services and in the agreements, there will be an emphasis on the what you are doing, not the how to do it.
 I'm also highlighting the point Tracy made around innovation and encouragement to try new things, identify what is not working and adapting.  The contract is designed to support that type of engagement model.
 In the requirements in Part 3, you would have noticed some service levels.
 These  gives you an indication of our expectations around those services and timeliness and the level of performance for those elements that those service levels relate to.
 Those service levels will also be incorporated in the new contract and will also be including key performance indicators, which will be more focused on outcomes. To give you an example of an outcome focused key performance indicator, what the number and percentage of students who are now back in school and attending on a regular basis. In terms of timings, following the evaluation process we are looking to sign contracts with the successful respondents early mid-October and providers will then start their transition process.
 Where there is an outgoing provider the new provider will be required to pick up any  open cases they might have in later December. And then the new providers will be managing those cases from the 1st of January and then must be ready to receive new referrals from the start of Term 1.
 Full service is broader than just accepting them and processing referrals, as you'll be aware. We have a preference for the full solution to be available and offered as close to the start of term one, but we are allowing the  balance of term one to build up the full solution if that time is required.
 The initial contact term will be approximately 26 months, assuming contract signature early mid-October, and then running through to the end of December.  As you would have noted in the RFA RFP document we advised an initial term of two years with a further discretionary right of renewal period of a further two years. Regarding the right of renewal, there will be a review of the services in 2027.
 Any renewal will be informed by provider performance and the outcomes that have been achieved. Any renewals that are offered may not be the same terms, and may be subject to change in funding and catchment volumes. So once again, just wanted to give clarity around what the renewal process might be look might look like and help if it might be operationalised.
I just want to highlight two particular dates, one being the Q&A closes on the 14 July. So please have any questions and to us via GETS or for schools via the e-mail address that's been provided in the education pack by that date. That gives us time to answer those questions and inform your final RFP/application output, which close at 10:00am on 23 July.

For those of you who haven't been involved in using GETS before I would encourage you to lodge early and just make sure that you're comfortable that everything's fully loaded.

A couple of key points on communication with the Ministry.
 Because we're running those two parallel processes, which adds an extra layer for us and we our focus on making sure that we're running a very fair transparent process, and get a really good outcome from this, and that we treat everybody equally regardless of which stream you come in under. As schools will have seen in the application document, we've given you an e-mail address for questions and communication.
 It's GETS for other organisations for raising questions. We are taking questions, regardless of which way they come in and making sure that everybody sees all those.. Please don't contact other Ministry staff regarding the process. Use those two channels for all your all Q&A. Thank you.

We have two workshops which are scheduled, the first of these is this afternoon. I believe there's quite a few responded to attend these as well. Just want to sort of highlight these workshops are generic and more general and actually not specific to the RFP, but if you are not familiar with participating in RFP or competitive application processes, it's designed to provide you with some, some guidance and some tips to help you with that with that process.

We won't be answering questions in that workshop around these services or around this particular RFP. So it's just it's just really general guidance to help you with your responses. So if you have questions on the RFP or the application process use the two channels that we have already advised.

OK, I think that's all we really want to cover off now. Now I want to sort of throw it over for questions. Tracy, there are some that you got, you've got one there. Do you want to do that or Chris, are you still?

So I'm assuming you can all still hear me.
Cool. Awesome. OK. All right. So well, the way we're going to do this, you are putting your questions through the Q&A process. Christina's letting Andrew or I have a note of the ones that we think are best answered in here and that's what we'll do. And as we've said, we'll publish them all over the next day or so following this meeting, so.
This question what considerations have been made for students who require tailored support?
For example, Māori  students in catchment areas that haven't appointed or Māori provider. I think we have been very clear that we expect all providers to be able to provide tailored support to meet the needs of all students. We've also emphasised that we are conscious that.
Māori and Pacifica students are over represented in here, so they're a particular area of focus for us.
But we expect the providers to work with the students, understand all of the barriers that are stopping them from attending school, figure out what a solution might be, and put a plan in place to address those as best they can. And we're not going to prescribe to you how you do that, but we are going to be monitoring. We'll be looking in the evaluation process and then monitoring.
Providers are in place to be making sure that their responses are being tailored.
All of the needs of all of the students referred.
Next question, do we have any indication of the quantum of establishment funding?
That's not confirmed yet, but I expect it will be somewhere in the region of 6 to 8 weeks worth of a full year's worth of funding. So we're trying to put a reasonable amount of of of money into.
That transition establishment and transition period. So as soon as we've got more certainty about that, we will 
let people know, but that's kind of what we think it will look like.
And do we have any statistics on the reasons for absences, so mental distress, addiction and so on? We don't have a specific piece of work that we can refer you to, and there's a lot of information on the Ministry’s website in general. We have referred you, I think in the RFP/RFA documents to the recent report by the Education Review Office and that has a really good summary of the kind of issues that are facing people, the young people and an idea of where the targets for that are.
So yeah, I think that's the best answer I can give you at this point. We don't have a specific piece of work, but there is quite a lot of information out there.
What consideration has been given to managing existing local relationships between schools and providers? So I guess two things in there.
Are looking for that transition period to make sure that if there is a change between the current provider to a new provider that there's an opportunity for those sorts of relationships and information about the local area to be transitioned. It's also a very strong expectation in the contract that the that new providers will put a
 considerable amount of effort into building our relationships with their local communities, including the schools.
And I've talked a little bit already about how we expect that that providers will work closely with the schools that have referred or are about to accept a student back into their school. So we expect those relationships to become much stronger in many cases even than they are now.
And the ministry will be there to support that if that's needed.
More so, this is another one about the establishment funds. Have we got any more detail about it, what's included? What's the process? So it will be included in the contract documentation once we actually issue their final contracts and how you spend that money if you're a successful provider will be down to you. We're not going to ask for specifics.
We we're acknowledging that that takes time and effort.
We want to help it to work well by providing funding for it, but we're not going to prescribe or monitor how we do that.
Right. Sorry I haven't pre read these so.
If a non-school entity gains a contract, is there a risk requirement for a school to be responsible for the liaison and management of that entity?
Responsibility to be held by the ministry. I think the best way I can answer this is to say from our perspective we are contracting with a provider. That provider may be a school. It may be an NGO, it may be an iwi / Māori organisation. It may be some other kind of organisation that we don't currently contract with. We don't know what they will be.
Once there is a provider, then we will expect that provider to manage their service, and their service delivery and all of their relationships in that area, and we will manage that contract with that provider. So hopefully that helps to make that clear. We do expect the contract to be held by the organisation or entity that is responsible for delivering the service and that we will be able to have a relationship directly with that. So we're not expecting to see multiple layers within a structure.
Can we please clarify the multi catchment areas, so the process is per reporting. Will each catchment need separate and independent reporting? The answer’s yes and we have designed the catchments to be small enough to be locally responsive but large enough to be financially viable. We've done that for that reason and we believe that those relationships and the ability to respond to the characteristics of the local community are important.
Therefore, we will manage each contract as an individual contract. The we are looking to build the case management system, excuse me, in a way that will allow an organisation that's got multiple contracts to be able to aggregate its information if it wants to be able to see it
 in that way. But in terms of what comes back to us, we will have different people managing each individual catchment, each individual contract. So that's how we will expect the contract to be managed.
Right. I'm going to stop talking for a second and just hand over to Andrew, who I think's got a couple of questions on the procurement process.
And I'll just check that you can hear me. OK, let's hit thumbs up from someone. Yeah, right. Thank you. So question with the dual application process, do we get to send you all Q&A little questions from schools we published on hips? The answer reviews we saying the answers to everybody and at the same time if one so same type of same goes out to all those schools who are registered and they've got the application pack and most of them on 26th part of that keeping it.
The brush is this on.
Touched on this on before, so the question was applying for two plus catchments as a requirement by separate responses and we can include the single response just confirming 2 separate responses please. And the reason being that there are 84 initial evaluations teams working together to evaluate and catch up, so we'll require a response.
Yeah, I better catch a bill and and we, we acknowledge that there will be some.
Repetition of the some content and perhaps your responses, but but also straight to touched on, recognising that expecting that to see the catchment features and coming through on the responses as well. So that's why.
Catch up in a bit late responses.
She was? Yep. Back to me. 

OK, so what's fundamentally different about the new service compared to the previous model, I think to some degree that may depend on where you are.
What we've done is used the the reviews, and the research if you like, that's been done by the Education Review Office and by ourselves to identify what we think are the strongest features of the services that are out there.
But the main issues we have at the moment is a very high level of inconsistency across the country, both in terms of how well providers are funded and what kind of services they deliver in and what proportion of the local chronically absent students they're actually reaching. So what we're doing is building a consistent service description and a consistent funding model across the whole country to pull the best bits of those out to everywhere. We're very clear this is focused on chronic absence.
Those of you who are already working in this area will know at the moment it's described as unjustified absence. We're not making that distinction. We're saying anybody that's chronically absent may be eligible for referral through to the attendant service. We put in very strong emphasis on the the, the, the service being about the student.
So we're moving away from thinking about cases and we're moving away from performance indicators that t
ry to get somebody out of the door as quickly as possible into ways of working that are most likely to have a long lasting impact on the student. I could talk for about 15 minutes on the differences, but fundamentally I think they're the core things.
We're looking for providers who want to focus on why is the kid not going to school? What can we do to help? Is it working? If not, let's adjust what we do and try something else until we get to a point where we've got most of those students back at school.
We do acknowledge that that some of these students, they're dealing with complex social problems and this takes me. I'm just going to link into the next question which is asking is school attendance considered a top priority across all government departments or just education?
So I think we acknowledge that there are students that their circumstances are so complex or challenging that the attendance, service and education system as a whole may not be sufficient to address those.
The the education. I'm sorry. The attendance targets are one of the government's key priority areas and so it's a commitment for them across the whole of government. And you'll see increasingly I think that there is an explicit awareness of the importance of attendance and the negative outcomes associated with poor attendance. And if you look at the ERO report, you'll see that quite clearly.
That all the evidence suggests that very low levels of attendance are a good indicator of poor life outcomes for people.
That is a message I think that has been acknowledged across all of government and all departments and education. Access to education will never be the top priority for other government agencies, so you wouldn't expect
 a government agency whose top priority was dealing with domestic violence and keeping people in that environment safe 
to put education as their best priority or attendance at school as their first. But what we are working with them is to be saying ‘where you reach a point at which you’re making a specific decision, attendance would be a consideration in there. And I think that we have a level of agreement across the the, particularly the social sector
Ministers and Chief Executives that that's that is important.
So I wouldn't say it was their top priority. It's not appropriate, but it is certainly a priority for them and on their on their radar.
Will there be a consultation with local communities as part of the procurement process? Unfortunately, the answer to that is no. We had a very short window of time between government making the decision to allocate the significant increase in funding in the budget and just been required to have a new service in place up and running in the new year, and so the the procurement process is being run by the Ministry.  But I hope I've given you the very clear message that the expectation is that providers, potential providers, you will convince us of how you will be working with your local community and we will expecting to see that demonstrated in the new service when we've got the new providers in place.
Will we ensure that schools are willing to work with successful providers?
Ensure is quite a strong word. We will certainly be working with schools to make it clear to them the advantages from our perspective of them both referring the appropriate students across to providers and working with them. And we will have some escalation processes where we think that schools are inappropriately referring or not referring or or not engaging. So we are very much looking for a collaboration. We expect that schools will see this as to their benefit.
I don't expect that to be a problem, but we will be monitoring to make sure that that's how it plays out in practise.
Past and current attendance. OK, so how do we know what has happened before this new service in specific catchments and where can we find past and current attendance date of the specific scores?
Not sure we're going to be able to do in the short term attendance data around specific scores in terms of this evaluation process. The best thing I can do at the moment is to point you to Education Counts, which is the statistics page on the Ministry's website.
And that gives you a good breakdown of attendance data at the regional level. Now, that's not at the catchment level, I acknowledge that.
But we haven't had the opportunity to break it down to there. But the that that information on Education Education Counts  will give you a bit of a sense of, at least at a regional level where you're at.
Have other catchment areas have their catchment changed and if so, what was the reason?
So I I I'm imagining here that this is somebody who's where you're in a catchment where, where where the catchment of the current catchment feels quite different to what's currently in place.
I think my sort of best answer to that is to say that we've worked closely with the regions for them to look at what are the best catchments to put in place.
They've taken account of kind of feeder schools, the needs of the local community profile of the local community, iwi boundaries. They've looked at the regional boundaries and they've made a judgement call as to what they consider is the best grouping. They've also. Remember I've already kind of signalled that we've done the, we wanted small enough to be local, big enough to be viable. So they've taken that into account.
And in some parts of the country, there is a shift because we're very clear that this contract, this model requires attendance service providers to deliver services to both chronically absent and non-enrolled students, and there are some parts of the country where that's not currently the case - where those two services separated. We're bringing them together. We couldn't just bring them all together in one area. We've had to look at how we distribute that to get to a reasonable size of catchments. So there have been a lot of detailed changes. We've gone from I think
81 to 84, but the changes are probably in the detail. Sorry, I'm just conscious of time. Are there any of these, Christina, that you think, I haven't read the, is there anything that would be the best ones to focus on is doing all that one?
That one.
OK, so are their future plans to also tender alternative education contracts to align with attendance services. That's a good question. At the moment, there's no specific work in that area. I I know in the ministry is you know always looking at things like the alternative education contracts. So at the moment nothing specific and that may well change in time.
Is there an MOU with Oranga Tamariki and MSD to support providers with referrals? And we've got a fairly substantial piece of work underway that was funded in this same budget, 
to improve the information sharing agreements, which is basically what underpins this kind of what you're talking about, the MOU.
So.
And that work is is kind of starting to happen now to make sure that we've got all of those information sharing arrangements in place.
Similarly, that we've got those arrangements underpinning any kind of multi-agency panels which exist in some parts of the country and we're hoping to strengthen so that area of making sure that we work well, you can work well with the other government agencies, is is is happening. I won't say it's perfect. There will be challenges, but yes, there is work under way to make sure that's supported.
The ERO report identified a lack of funding was a contributing factor, has the funding increased on a per student basis? So the answer is yes.
A big part of that change actually takes effect on Tuesday 1 July, when we, where the change to redistribute the Attendance Officer funding into the Attendance Service delivery contracts. So that's in the current contracts.
So that's shifted the the average amount per per student quite significantly and that will take effect and that carries through into the new the new arrangements. We have significantly increased their capacity of the providers under the new arrangements. So overall the average per student basis, probably you know if we reached full capacity would stay about the same as it will be from July, which is a good 50% higher than it is today.
But remember what I've said about we expect the volumes to increase so and it will vary. We also are very cognisant I think some students will require a lot more support, others a lot less support so that we may that average per student, that it has increased significantly.
Some place with glance that in which some form. Yeah. OK, so we just we we capture in all of their questions. I'm noticing we've got about 3 minutes left. Just a reminder anything that we haven't answered on on this call we will bring through into the.
Into the.
Questions and answers that will be published.
If this another one or is that is that the old one? Yeah.
Yeah. OK. Look, I think we.
Oh, OK, I will answer this one. So is it safe to assume that the indicative volumes and values will not change significantly as a result of the in-school provision? So the reason why we've given you a range is to show you if none of the schools in your area were awarded an in-school provision contract, you would be getting sort of the top end of that range. If they all took it, you'd be getting the bottom end. So that's the sort of roughly the scale of the impact of in school provision. So you should be able to.
 Are in relation to each catchment.
All right, I think that is probably as much as we should try and do conscious that everybody's time is valuable and we want to close the meeting well. So I would just like to say thank you all for being here. It's great to see so many people interested in in this opportunity to work with us to deliver a service that we are committed to making sure makes a significant difference to a significant number of students who are currently missing out
 on attendance at school, and therefore all of the benefits that come from education, and so that's it for me, I'm going to hand over to Christina to close this out.
Kia ora. Can I just get a wave or something to make sure you can all hear me? Ka pai, ngā mihi. Similar to Tracy. Thank you so much. It is wonderful to see so many people here wanting to make a big difference for our team. Please remember.
If your question did not get answered and I can see at least three that did not get answered, you will get an answer. It will be in writing we will answer all of the questions.
And Please remember, if you have questions after this, please use the GETS question function or if you're a school the e-mail that we have sent. Any questions that come via schools will also be published on GETS. So everyone, and vice versa. So everyone will see all questions and answers. We want everyone to have as much information as possible.
Have I? OK, I'm going to close the briefing. Thank you all so much for your awesome questions.

Kua hikitia te Kaupapa
Kua takoto te wero
Me hoe tahi i runga i te whakaaro Kotahi
Tiaki tō tāua oranga
Kia kaha ai mo te tuku taonga
Kia tūtuki ngā hiahia mō ka hikitia
Tihei mauriora!
Ki te whai ao!
Ki te whai oranga e!
Mauriora

Gina Royal   0:04
I'll be supporting my colleague who is more knowledgeable than me and these processes and I'll lead her into GC South now.

Becca McHugh   0:14
My name is Becca McHugh I'm a procurement specialist here at the Ministry of Education to support my colleagues in running through this workshop today. So welcome and I'm happy to be here. You'll hear more from.

Gina Royal   0:47
Today's workshop is about supporting you, understanding the process taken within GETS and supporting you to fill out your forms, tips and guidance as well.

If you have any questions while we're running through the workshop today, just pop them into the chat and at the end we'll have a Q&A session. If they're pertaining to the workshop and processes that we're going to speak about, we should be able to answer those. If there anything pertaining to the procurement itself, those will be raised to get. If there's something that we can't answer for you, it will come back to you.

There's a function button within GETS which lets you raise your questions and it will be responded to by the appropriate person, so don't go to your local ministry office asking questions about the procurement as it's all done in GETS.   This is so it's transparent, clear and a level playing field for all respondents of this procurement opportunity.

You are also welcome to send in a little video intro.

With your application, if you wish to do so.

So now I'll give it over to Becca. Thank you.

Becca McHugh   2:28
Perfect. Thank you for that, Gina, I'll just ask you to keep an eye on participants that are coming in and just accepting them or as they come through. And Jo Robinson, you have your hand up. I'm not sure if you have a question now or if that was a mistake. But I just wanted to see if everything's good there.

Jo Robinson   2:47
Yeah, I know. Just to say that it was OK to be recorded.

Becca McHugh   2:50
OK legend. Thank you so much.
Perfect. Alrighty. Let's get into it.
So you would have all received the documentation pack by now, hopefully.
Non schools you will be doing it all through GETS.  And schools, you'll be doing it via e-mail. I will go through that a little bit more soon.

In the documentation pack, we ask that you read the whole pack very carefully, taking note of those timelines, especially the deadlines for questions and answers.
Make sure you look at the key dates and chuck those dates in your calendar so that you can keep yourself on track.

And make sure that you understand our requirements. These are in section three of your pack, and the evaluation criteria. Now the evaluation criteria are matched to the response form questions and identify what we will be evaluating your proposal against. So do familiarise with yourself with those evaluation criteria.
Feel free to ask questions throughout the process. It is important that you're clear on our process and our expectations, so no questions is a silly question. Please send those through.

I do want to just bring your attention to the fact that any questions asked will be shared with everybody. It's a fair and transparent process. So you will all get access to those questions and answers. However, the only time we won't be sharing it is if there is commercially sensitive information, for example, finances or things we'll be holding that.

So just be conscious of the fact that questions will be shared, so everyone's on the same page.
Now the response form is in part five of the documentation pack. This is the template that you need to fill out and submit as your application or your proposal.

Remember as well that a separate response form is required to be completed for each catchment that you're responding to supply. So if you are planning on responding to more than one catchment, please be aware that you will need a response form for each of those.

Perfect.

Now some of the response tips,  so answer all the questions in the response form. As I mentioned, the questions do relate back to the evaluation criteria and how we will be marking or scoring these. So if you haven't got an answer to one of those questions that could be detrimental. So answer all the questions.

Becca McHugh   5:21
And prepare your response carefully, consider what each question is asking. I'm just gonna describe a little bit more of what Imean. So for instance, explain means to provide information about something, to make it easy to understand, for example, explain your understanding of XYZ.

Describe focuses on providing details about something, to show what it's like. For example, describe your approach to x, y, z.

Outline focuses on the organisation and the structure of the content.

The outline of an implementation plan, for example, and not just the headings.

Summary concentrates on capturing the essential points in a concise matter. Whereas an overview is more broad and a general understanding of the topic, highlighting key themes in the bigger picture. So the summary is more of a concise, smaller, detailed account.

Avoid very wordy responses and long sentences. We love tables, diagrams, bullet points. Tis is a good way to communicate clearly.

Put yourself in the evaluators shoes. What do you think that they're going to want to know as well?

Assume that the evaluation team doesn't know you or your previous work. Evaluators can only score what's in front of them. So ensure that you get someone to proofread, since check your proposal before you submit it.

We cannot as evaluators use existing knowledge to confirm, to evaluate your response. However, we can use existing knowledge to confirm or challenge via clarification questions in the written response.

The weighting for each criteria or question indicate the relative importance of each question. So the higher the weighting the higher the importance of that question. So that's important. As you look through really call out those higher weightings and make sure that you're put extra effort into those.

If a response guidance if a response guidance is provided, ensure you've covered all those points raised in the guidance.

And if a suggested response length to a question is provided, use that as a guidance.

However, if a hard response limit to a question is provided, so they're saying not to, for example, go for more than half a page, please do comply with those limits.

I think that's probably good for that one.

We'll move on to thinking about your point of difference. What sets you apart? Have you clearly communicated that in your response? 

Make sure your response is easily read. Clearly flows and answers each section.

Clearly reference any attachments. So for example CVs or outline implementation plans. Make it easy for the evaluators to navigate and find the relevant information.

And again, proofread for errors and clarity.

Now GETS, this again is for the non school respondents. So if you are a school you will be sending your Response s via the Ministry e-mail address I've got on another slide. 

Gina Royal   8:45
In the chat, it's in the chat.

Becca McHugh   8:50
So the next slide is going to go through the GETSprocess at a high level.

Becca McHugh   8:58
So getting started with GETS, you can access GETS through www.gets.govt.nz. If you've already registered, then you can log on here. If not then you will need to login down below where it says online services and create or sign up with a real me account.

Apart from the schools, you've all downloaded the RFP from GETS, so should have hopefully got past the screen. If not, then you can contact the GETS helpline which will have the information for.

Once you are into this stage, you can type in attendance in the search bar and it will bring up the attendance services RFP.

Subscribe to the attendance notice GETS. Look for the blue bottom underneath the overview.  You need to subscribe to the attendance notice to access, attach access attachments, raise questions, or submit a response. So open the tender, subscribe to this notice for full access. Make sure the supplier details are correct and click submit.

Also to note that you can see all tenders that you're subscribed to by clicking subscribe to Tender notices on the navigation bar.

When submitting a response open and subscribe to the Tender. Click Tender a response enter your response details and add attachments and commit response. Now it's very important that you confirm that you confirm that you have got a receipt notification and that it's showing that your attachments have loaded and been submitted. So please make sure you check for that receipt. We want to make sure that everyone's application's gone through and if there are any issues we want to nip them in the bud.
That’s everything. The key thing is subscribing to this Tender everything else kind of flows in from there.

If you have trouble registering or logging on to GETS, then please ring the GETS helpline. So take note of the number on your screen and the e-mail address.
Now please, we ask that you try and upload and submit your response a day before the deadline. If you can, at the very least, give yourself a couple of hours to upload and and submit your response. Just in case you run into any technical difficulties and need some assistance there.

So yeah, there is the number for GETS and there is the e-mail address.

All right, before we go into any part, I want to say that we have another workshop scheduled for tomorrow at 11:00 AM. If this is in your calendar, you can remove it and I'll give you an hour back in your time, because it's exactly the same content that we're sharing today. So you don't need to attend both.

All righty, now that was a lot of information and I talk quite fast. So are there any pātai or questions for us?

Becca McHugh   0:03
Read documentation pack, carefully noting those timelines, especially the closing date and the question and answers. Those are the two dates you want to chuck in your calendar as soon as possible.

And anything else that is in there of importance.

Make sure that you understand our requirements. They will be found in section three of the pack and our evaluation criteria and the response form in Section 5. The evaluation criteria are mapped to the response from questions. So just take note of that that those questions.

Make sure you read through them all and answer them all.

Feel free to ask questions. It is important that you're clear on the ministry's process and our expectations. Know as well that questions that are raised will be shared to everybody, unless you're asking information that is commercially sensitive.  We will hold that back, but otherwise everything is transparent and fair, so those will be up on the Ministry’s, website, including all the questions and answers from today and throughout the process as well.

The response form in part five of your documentation pack is the template that you need to fill in and submit as your application or proposal. Remember that if you are planning on submitting a response for more than one catchment then you will need more than one response form, so it's a response form per catchment for this Tender.
Answer all the questions in the response form. As I said, they are linked back to the evaluation criteria, so you'll want to answer them all.

Prepare your response carefully, consider what each question is asking. If it's asking you to explain this will involve providing information about something to make it easy to understand. For example, explain your understanding of xyz. If it's asking you to describe them, we're asking you to focus on providing details about something to show what it's like. For example, describe your approach to xyz. If it's asking you to outline, then this is focusing on the organisation and the structure of the content. So if asking you to outline the implementation plan or for example, don't just put the headings in.

Summary concentrates on capturing the essential points in a concise manner, whereas an overview is more broad, and a general understanding of the topic, highlighting key themes and bigger picture, whereas the summary is a more concise  detailed account of specific points.

Note that most of our questions that are asking your answers to reflect the relevant catchment or features considerations. For example, your answer to the question related to your approach or solution should acknowledge and reflect the relevant catchment features in your answer.

Consider the evaluators. Put yourself in their shoes and what are they going to want to know? Make it easy for them to read and assess your response to each question to each question.

Unless it's necessary, don't refer to your responses toother questions as part of your answers. So try and keep that quite separate and clear.

Avoid wordy, extra wordy responses and long sentences, tables, diagrams and bullet points are a good way to communicate information clearly.

Assume that the evaluation team does not know you or your previous work. Evaluators can only score what is in front of them. They cannot use existing or prior knowledge to base their evaluation scores on. However, they can use existing knowledge to confirm or challenge via clarification questions within the written response.
The weightings for each criteria or question indicates the relative importance of each question.
So the higher the rating, the higher the importance.

If a response guidance is provided, ensure you have covered all the points raised in that guidance as well as anything in the requirements as part of your response. Guidance is found in part five of your RFP with red writing that will support you more to understand what's being asked and what you need to consider and your answer.

If there's a suggested response length to a question, then please follow that also and use it as a guidance, whereas if it's a hard response limit then we're asking you to comply with that limit and not go over, for example, no more than half a page, if that's what we're asking.

Important to be concise, clear and just communicate your response as well.

Think about your point of difference. What sets you apart? Have you communicated that with your response? For example, have you communicated your point of difference as part of your outlined approach or the description of the capability and capacity in your team or description of the depth of the relationships you have with the key stakeholders?

Clearly reference any attachments, for example CVs or implementation plans,  Make it easy for the evaluators to navigate and find the relevant material within documents.

And proofread, for errors and clarity. Ensure your response is easily read. Clearly flows and answers each section.

Now GETS, why do we use GETS? It's free for all government departments. It's a one stop shop for supplies seeking government work. Now the GETS process is only for non school respondents. So schools e-mail  yours directly to the ministry e-mail address as outlined in your RFA. It's the exact same approach for both non schools and schools. It's just slightly different system that we're using to collect your responses.

The next step slides will go through the basics of GETS.

Apart from schools, you've all downloaded the RFP from GETS, so you should have got past the screen. If not, then you can access the GETS website on this www.gets.govt.nz.  Login here where it says supplier login. If you've already registered.

If you've not registered then you want to click down here and create a new account where you'll need to set up a real me login.

Once you are logged on, type attendance in the search bar and it will bring up the attendance services RFP.
Subscribing to tender notice - you will need to subscribe to a tender notice to access all the attachments, to raise questions or submit a response. So to subscribe you will open the Tender, click, subscribe to this notice for full access, make sure that all the supplier details are correct and then click submit.

Note that you can see all tenders you're subscribed to by clicking subscribe to tender notices on the navigation bar.

Submitting a response - you'll open and subscribe to the Tender, which you should have already done by this point. Click Tender a response into your response details and add attachments and submit to your response. Now we ask that you just triple check and confirm that you have a receipt notification and that it's showing that your attachments have loaded and been submitted. We want to make sure that everything's gone through and nothing's been missed.

The key thing is to subscribe to the tender. Everything else kind of comes from there.
If you have trouble registering or logging into GETS, then you can ring the GETS helpline on the screen or e-mail via inbox info at gets.govt.nz. 

Try and upload and submit your response a day before if you can. At the very least, give yourself 2 hours to upload or submit your response. So if you do run into difficulties, then you'll have some time to work through those and ring the GETS helpline.

In your RFP documentation pack there is a link to YouTube video that will support you in using GETS.

School respondents, you can send everything  directly to the ministry e-mail address [email protected].

Becca McHugh   9:10
Perfect questions. So Gina, I'll hand over, have we had anything come through the chat?

Becca McHugh   0:03
Read documentation pack, carefully noting those timelines, especially the closing date and the question and answers. Those are the two dates you want to chuck in your calendar as soon as possible.
And anything else that is in there of importance.
Make sure that you understand our requirements. They will be found in section three of the pack and our evaluation criteria and the response form in Section 5. The evaluation criteria are mapped to the response from questions. So just take note of that that those questions.
Make sure you read through them all and answer them all.
Feel free to ask questions. It is important that you're clear on the ministry's process and our expectations. Know as well that questions that are raised will be shared to everybody, unless you're asking information that is commercially sensitive.  We will hold that back, but otherwise everything is transparent and fair, so those will be up on the Ministry’s, website, including all the questions and answers from today and throughout the process as well.
The response form in part five of your documentation pack is the template that you need to fill in and submit as your application or proposal. Remember that if you are planning on submitting a response for more than one catchment then you will need more than one response form, so it's a response form per catchment for this Tender.
Answer all the questions in the response form. As I said, they are linked back to the evaluation criteria, so you'll want to answer them all.

Prepare your response carefully, consider what each question is asking. If it's asking you to explain this will involve providing information about something to make it easy to understand. For example, explain your understanding of xyz. If it's asking you to describe them, we're asking you to focus on providing details about something to show what it's like. For example, describe your approach to xyz. If it's asking you to outline, then this is focusing on the organisation and the structure of the content. So if asking you to outline the implementation plan or for example, don't just put the headings in.
Summary concentrates on capturing the essential points in a concise manner, whereas an overview is more broad, and a general understanding of the topic, highlighting key themes and bigger picture, whereas the summary is a more concise  detailed account of specific points.

Note that most of our questions that are asking your answers to reflect the relevant catchment or features considerations. For example, your answer to the question related to your approach or solution should acknowledge and reflect the relevant catchment features in your answer.

Consider the evaluators. Put yourself in their shoes and what are they going to want to know? Make it easy for them to read and assess your response to each question to each question.

Unless it's necessary, don't refer to your responses toother questions as part of your answers. So try and keep that quite separate and clear.

Avoid wordy, extra wordy responses and long sentences, tables, diagrams and bullet points are a good way to communicate information clearly.

Assume that the evaluation team does not know you or your previous work. Evaluators can only score what is in front of them. They cannot use existing or prior knowledge to base their evaluation scores on. However, they can use existing knowledge to confirm or challenge via clarification questions within the written response.

The weightings for each criteria or question indicates the relative importance of each question.
So the higher the rating, the higher the importance.

If a response guidance is provided, ensure you have covered all the points raised in that guidance as well as anything in the requirements as part of your response. Guidance is found in part five of your RFP with red writing that will support you more to understand what's being asked and what you need to consider and your answer.

If there's a suggested response length to a question, then please follow that also and use it as a guidance, whereas if it's a hard response limit then we're asking you to comply with that limit and not go over, for example, no more than half a page, if that's what we're asking.

Important to be concise, clear and just communicate your response as well.

Think about your point of difference. What sets you apart? Have you communicated that with your response? For example, have you communicated your point of difference as part of your outlined approach or the description of the capability and capacity in your team or description of the depth of the relationships you have with the key stakeholders?

Clearly reference any attachments, for example CVs or implementation plans,  Make it easy for the evaluators to navigate and find the relevant material within documents.

And proofread, for errors and clarity. Ensure your response is easily read. Clearly flows and answers each section.

Now GETS, why do we use GETS? It's free for all government departments. It's a one stop shop for supplies seeking government work. Now the GETS process is only for non school respondents. So schools e-mail  yours directly to the ministry e-mail address as outlined in your RFA. It's the exact same approach for both non schools and schools. It's just slightly different system that we're using to collect your responses.

The next step slides will go through the basics of GETS.

Apart from schools, you've all downloaded the RFP from GETS, so you should have got past the screen. If not, then you can access the GETS website on this www.gets.govt.nz.  Login here where it says supplier login. If you've already registered.

If you've not registered then you want to click down here and create a new account where you'll need to set up a real me login.

Once you are logged on, type attendance in the search bar and it will bring up the attendance services RFP.
Subscribing to tender notice - you will need to subscribe to a tender notice to access all the attachments, to raise questions or submit a response. So to subscribe you will open the Tender, click, subscribe to this notice for full access, make sure that all the supplier details are correct and then click submit.

Note that you can see all tenders you're subscribed to by clicking subscribe to tender notices on the navigation bar.

Submitting a response - you'll open and subscribe to the Tender, which you should have already done by this point. Click Tender a response into your response details and add attachments and submit to your response. Now we ask that you just triple check and confirm that you have a receipt notification and that it's showing that your attachments have loaded and been submitted. We want to make sure that everything's gone through and nothing's been missed.

The key thing is to subscribe to the tender. Everything else kind of comes from there.
If you have trouble registering or logging into GETS, then you can ring the GETS helpline on the screen or e-mail via inbox info at gets.govt.nz. 

Try and upload and submit your response a day before if you can. At the very least, give yourself 2 hours to upload or submit your response. So if you do run into difficulties, then you'll have some time to work through those and ring the GETS helpline.
In your RFP documentation pack there is a link to YouTube video that will support you in using GETS. 

School respondents, you can send everything  directly to the ministry e-mail address [email protected].

Becca McHugh   9:10
Perfect questions. So Gina, I'll hand over, have we had anything come through the chat?

Refer published Q&A