Government lawyers have dismissed claims made by a major group of training providers that the Department for Education acted unlawfully in the recent national adult education budget tender.
Learning Curve Group and its seven subsidiary training companies filed a lawsuit against the DfE in August following its unsuccessful bids for a new national AEB contract.
They claimed that the department breached its duties under procurement regulations in its evaluation of their bid, specifically in relation to the group’s responses to tender questions about future learner numbers (question 1B1).
Learning Curve Group claimed it was “deprived of a real chance of winning a contract” and the DfE’s Education and Skills Funding Agency, which ran the procurement, provided “brief” and “vague” reasons for low scores in the tender.
