ESS002C - Provision of School Payment Solutions for the Irish Primary and Post-Primary School Sector
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The Education Procurement Service, (EPS), invites responses (“Tenders”) to this Request for Tenders (“RFT”) from economic operators (“Tenderers”) interested in being appointed to the Framework Agreements (“Framework Agreements”) for the provision of the services described in Appendix 1 (Requirements and Specifications) to this RFT (“the Services”). Irish Primary Schools and Irish Post-Primary Schools, will be the contracting authority for this Framework Agreement (“the Contracting Authority”) for this public procurement competition (“the Competition”).
The EPS is co-ordinating and undertaking the tender process as a central sourcing body on behalf of Irish Primary Schools and Irish Post-Primary Schools participating in this Framework.
Overview
In March 2014, the Central Bank published a report entitled ‘Payments in Irish Schools’ which revealed that parents and schools would both like to see far greater use of electronic payment methods in the school context. The majority of parents surveyed during the compiling of the report stated that they would make payments by electronic methods if schools had the systems in place to enable them to do so. Also reported was that for schools, the desire to migrate to electronic payments was very strong, with the majority of schools surveyed indicating a preference for a dedicated school payments system as a form of payment method.
Consequently, the objectives of this tendering exercise is marry the stated preferences of both parents and schools and seek to deliver a comprehensive range of flexible, user-friendly payment solutions which makes the sending to, and receiving payments in schools, more flexible for all. This development would go some way towards reducing the number of cash payments for school activities from the schools themselves, yet would not remove the cash payment option for those parents who prefer that method of payment. These stated objectives would also achieve the alignment of schools payments with the National Payments Plan, published by the Central Bank in April 2013.
The Irish school system is comprised of primary and post-primary schools. The primary education sector includes in excess of 3,200 state-funded primary schools, special schools and private primary schools. The state-funded schools include religious schools, non-denominational schools, multi-denominational schools and Gaelscoileanna (Irish-medium schools). The post-primary education sector comprises approximately 800 secondary, vocational, community and comprehensive schools. Secondary schools are privately owned and managed. Approximately one third of all second level schools are state-established and administered by Education and Training Boards (ETBs), while the remaining voluntary, community and comprehensive schools are managed by Boards of Management of differing compositions and operate as individual contracting authorities.
Education and Training Boards are statutory authorities which have responsibility for education and training, youth work and a range of other functions. Formerly known as Vocational Education Committees (VECs) ETBs manage and operate second‐level schools, further education colleges, multi‐faith community national schools and a range of adult, further education and training centres delivering education and training programmes, including 19 (former FAS) training centres. There are 16 Education and Training Boards spread throughout the country with over 650 sites under their remit.
Please find Key Statistics for 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 available at the following link:
(http://www.education.ie/en/Publications/Statistics/Key-Statistics/Key-Statistics-2016-2017.pdf)