Education Tenders and Contracts

Education procurement covers what schools, academy trusts, colleges and universities buy to run. That includes school catering and hot meals, cleaning, home to school and SEN transport, supply teacher and recruitment services, school building refurbishment and heating works, ICT, HR and payroll systems and audit. Councils also commission special educational needs and additional learning needs support.

Stotles brings together education tenders and contracts from 100+ portals into one search, so you do not have to check each portal separately, and you can set alerts for new opportunities across the UK and Ireland.

If you want to search the government portals directly, Find a Tender carries higher-value contracts across the UK and Contracts Finder carries lower-value contracts in England. Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI cover Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Ireland's eTenders covers Irish public bodies, and many councils, NHS bodies and housing associations publish on their own e-tendering portals such as ProContract. Academy trusts, colleges and schools often publish on their own portals, Irish schools tender their hot school meals one school at a time on Ireland's eTenders, and framework call-offs go only to suppliers already on that framework.

Education tenders are scored on quality and price, and for services in schools the quality section carries safeguarding, how you will work around the school day and term dates, and how you will report to the head or trust. Local authority and trust buyers often prefer suppliers with other school contracts, so references from schools carry weight.

Anyone working in schools needs safeguarding checks, including enhanced DBS checks with a children's barred list check, and buyers expect providers to follow the statutory safeguarding guidance for schools. School caterers must be registered as a food business, and transport providers must meet licensing rules. Tenders usually set minimum insurance cover, check financial standing and ask for evidence of similar contracts at selection stage. Under the Procurement Act 2023, suppliers can be excluded for certain criminal convictions, insolvency or failure to pay tax.

Individual schools and academy trusts tender their own services, and many buy through frameworks run by purchasing organisations such as CPC and YPO. Trusts often group several schools into one contract, and some appoint an adviser to run the tender. Councils run their own transport and special educational needs contracts.

Yes. Multi-academy trusts and buying organisations such as ESPO run frameworks covering outsourced catering, cleaning and inclusion services, and local authorities run frameworks for SEND transport and alternative provision. These are worth tracking even outside an open tender.

Academy trusts, individual schools, colleges, universities, councils and education authorities all buy. In Ireland, individual primary schools tender hot school meals under the national School Meals Scheme, and education and training boards tender equipment, catering and works.

Track the expiry dates of existing school catering, cleaning and transport contracts, academy trust board minutes and preliminary market engagement notices, which show education work coming due ahead of a notice. On Stotles you can track those signals and the buyers behind them, then follow a notice from pre-tender through to award.

The most common codes in education notices are 55523100 (School-meal services), 15894210 (School meals), 55524000 (School catering services) and 90919300 (School cleaning services). Transport and recruitment contracts carry 60000000 (Transport services (excl. Waste transport)) and 79600000 (Recruitment services).