Digital Languages Mentoring Project (Digital Platform Development)

The Department for Education is seeking a provider to deliver an online digital platform as an essential element of the Digital Languages Mentoring Project, which aims to encourage pupils in Year 9 to choose Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) at GCSE level. The online platform will host activities for pupils and include a chat function, enabling pupils to chat with a mentor online while carrying out the activities. The requirement is to develop and build an online platform for a private beta phase of a trial project which will be run in at least 40 schools in England in 2020, from late January to the end of February or early March. The platform may also be used at public beta phase in 2020-21, reaching 6000 pupils, and therefore must be suitable for upscaling to a national roll-out. The Digital Languages Mentoring Project (competed via a separate tender exercise) is to be targeted at Year 9 pupils in state maintained schools in England, with MFL undergraduate students from universities in England as mentors. The aim of the mentoring programme is to target 13 & 14 year olds who are unsure about whether to study languages at GCSE. These pupils will be of mixed abilities, mixed gender and mixed socio-economic backgrounds. The project's ambition is to inspire them to choose to study languages at GCSE level. This will be a digital project (as well as involving face to face visits) - using the digital platform to host interesting and stimulating digital resources to spark pupils' attention related to global culture and the value of languages.