School Transport Contracts and Tenders

Home-to-school transport contracts cover taxi, minibus and PCV (passenger-carrying vehicle) services that move pupils, most often mainstream scholars on standard routes and children with SEN or disabilities on dedicated or shared transport. Buyers are almost always county councils and combined authorities rather than individual schools, and a single contract often covers several routes rather than one.

Stotles brings together school transport 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. Councils run route mini-competitions through their own passenger transport dynamic purchasing systems, so award notices appear on Contracts Finder throughout the school year.

School transport mini-competitions are mostly scored on price per route, with vehicle suitability, passenger assistants and safeguarding checked as pass or fail. Routes are often let one at a time, so operators can bid only where they have capacity.

Operators need a PSV operator licence or council private hire licensing, and drivers and passenger assistants need enhanced DBS checks. 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.

School transport work is mostly let as mini-competitions among approved operators on dynamic purchasing systems and frameworks, so one authority can award many small contracts in a school year, while other councils tender batches of routes at once. School transport is bought by county councils, unitary councils, London boroughs and combined authorities.

Read home-to-school transport policies, SEND transport reviews, dynamic purchasing system reopening dates and route lists for the next school year, which show school transport 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.

School transport notices carry 60130000 (Special-purpose road passenger-transport services) and 60000000 (Transport services, excluding waste transport).