Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many bids were tabled for the contract to run the Turing Scheme; and what the monetary value of the lowest bid tabled was.

The Turing Scheme has made funding available for more than 41,000 students from schools, colleges and universities to go on study and work placements in over 150 destinations across the world this academic year. The government has also confirmed funding for the continuation of the Turing Scheme for the next 3 years, including £110 million for the 2022/23 academic year.

A competitive procurement exercise was conducted to appoint a delivery partner for the Turing Scheme from 1 April 2022. Two compliant bids were received for the contract to run the Turing Scheme. Following a robust procurement process, Capita’s bid was considered to be the highest in quality. The value of Capita’s bid was £6,271,155, which was the lowest bid in monetary value in this procurement.

As with all contracts, we will actively manage it at an operational and strategic level and should concerns arise, our contracts contain provisions and remedies to deal with them swiftly and effectively.

UK education providers who have successfully applied for funding may use the Turing Scheme funding to support mobilities for any of their students, regardless of study subject.

Statistics on actual participation in the scheme will be available after the end of the first year of the programme. The COVID-19 outbreak has had a significant effect on mobilities with some institutions choosing to delay their students’ placements. Statistics on participation in ERASMUS+ are published by the European Union: https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/resources-and-tools/statistics-and-factsheets.