Government’s �10 million baseline assessment contract struggling to attract takers?

Is this how baseline assessment providers reacting to the DfE's proposed test contract?

Are all three providers who have run baseline assessment systems in primary schools about to reject the chance of a £9.8 million contract to operate tests for five-year-olds from 2020?

The question raises itself amid some doubts about any of the three bidding, and with trials of the new assessment in literacy, numeracy and possibly aspects of pupil behaviour supposed to start next academic year.

Early Excellence, the firm which has operated an observational-based assessment system for which three quarters of schools opted, when given a choice of providers in 2015, ruled itself out shortly after the contract was announced in November.

Memorably, the company described at the time the government’s proposals as “self-contradictory, incoherent, unworkable and ultimately inaccurate, invalid and unusable.” (Apart from these issues, the tests were all good, apparently…)