Education: arguably the most important of all public sectors. Unfortunately, like most other sectors, budgets are tight and educational institutions must make every penny count. This is good news for local SMEs that can corner the market with innovative solutions and impactful social value.
More good news for SMEs is that the range of products and services schools, academies, and MATS (Multi-Academy Trusts) require is diverse. Here are just a few examples of goods and services in demand:
|
|
SMEs Are a Perfect Fit for School Contracts
The new Procurement Act encourages public bodies to include more SMEs in their supply chain. This is pretty easy for educational institutions because SMEs are perfectly suited to local contracts.
SMEs that are locally based tend to have relationships with other businesses in the area, so there is immediately a positive effect on employment and the local economy. Their local knowledge enables them to meet contract terms and conditions on a deeper level than larger enterprises without a local presence.
Competition in towns and cities is fierce. SMEs must be prepared to innovate if they want to stand out from the crowd and provide the best value for money. This is a huge benefit for schools because innovation usually results in improved or enhanced processes or operations, often with cost-savings thrown in.
Key Challenges in Winning School Contracts
The education sector is bound by some pretty strict regulations, the future of the country is at stake, after all. This presents SMEs with some procurement challenges, but being proactive and ensuring you are properly prepared to respond to tenders makes all the difference.
Common obstacles for SMEs include:
Here are three of the most common obstacles that trip up ill-prepared suppliers in the procurement process.
1) Tailored tenders
As one would expect, local authorities have different procurement plans. It all depends on their needs and priorities. Suppliers must bear this in mind and tailor their tender responses to each fit each contract published.
2) Compliance requirements
Procurement regulations aren’t static, as we’ve seen with the introduction of the Procurement Act 2023. Over and above the significant national changes, local authorities can modify the procurement process (within reason) to reflect their circumstances. For example, greater weighting for social value, which must have a specific focus (e.g., environmental initiatives related to renewable energy or energy efficiency).
Suppliers must stay up to date with local procurement regulations to ensure their bids are relevant and legally compliant with the buying process.
3) Data security
Schools deal in data, but not all data is open. Things like student and staff details, for instance, must be protected from cyber-attacks. However, suppliers must occasionally have access to data to deliver the contract successfully. Consider school lunches. Caterers must know how many students need kosher or halal meals, how many vegetarians and vegans there are, and if there are food allergies they must be aware of.
Suppliers must have measures in place to protect this data. Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus certifications are required, but additional data security measures are recommended.
Procurement in Schools
The Department for Education (DfE) has set procurement regulations for the education sector. Top most is the recommendation that schools use existing frameworks to source suppliers. There are many DfE approved frameworks that cater to education institutions, including:
- ESPO: ESPO is a public sector organisation that boasts over 120 specialist frameworks.
- Crown Commercial Services: CCS is a government-backed eProcurement platform that provides access to frameworks in each public sector, including education.
- Crescent Purchasing Consortium (CPC). CPC is a DfE approved charity that provides access to 84 education frameworks.
Who Are the Powers That Be?
Suppliers should do some research to find out who the key decision-makers are. They are most likely to be head teachers but sometimes they are school business managers, and in MATs executive teams are the buying decision makers. In each case, you’ll have to tailor your bid to the decision-maker’s role.
You might also find that some schools band together to publish collaborative contracts. This helps them cut costs, but it can make suppliers’ lives a tad more complicated, especially when it comes to delivering social value initiatives in line with differing objectives. One school could prioritise social projects while another could favour projects with economic value.
If necessary, social value priorities can be nailed down during negotiations. However, it’s possible to develop initiatives that combine the three pillars (social, economic, environmental), for example, apprenticeship programmes can be tailored to meet social and economic values.
Where to Find School Tenders
You’ll find school tenders on the frameworks above, but there are also independent platforms, like Supply2Gov, which is the largest database of government tenders in the UK and Republic of Ireland.
Supply2Gov’s contract finder is easy to navigate and incredibly user-friendly. Once you’ve registered for free, you enter all your business’s details and choose filters that match your works, goods, and services. This ensures you only get notified when relevant tenders are published.
You can also select the area you want to target. Local searches, which are great for SMEs, are free. But as your expertise grows you can choose a wider location. You can stick to England, extend to the UK, or take on the UK and Ireland.
Note: It’s worth keeping an eye on local authority or council procurement portals because it’s not mandatory for contracting authorities to publish below threshold (low-value) contracts on eProcurement portals. SMEs can find manageable tender opportunities that suit their procurement goals and capacity right in their vicinity.
Remember, early engagement and relationship building are essential to bring your business to education administrators’ attention and create awareness of your business offerings. Build a reputation for thought leadership, innovation, and reliability and that’s half the public procurement battle won.
How to Write Winning Proposals
Writing a winning proposal for the education sector is much like any other field. The key is to tailor it to contracting authorities’ specific needs. Although, some of their specific needs look a lot like everyone else’s, for example, cost effectiveness and sustainability.
The thing is, cost-effectiveness for a posh school looks very different to cost-effectiveness in state-funded schools in disadvantaged areas. Social value between the two extremes is also very different.
This highlights the importance of early engagement, relationship building, and community and market research in procurement.
So, not only do you have to meet the specs and requirements detailed in the tender documents, but you also have to understand the school’s role in the community, as seen from the school’s perspective (obviously) but also from the community’s. Both perspectives provide valuable insight to help you develop meaningful social value projects.
Speaking of Social Value
We’ve touched on social value, now we’re going to look at some practical examples that are relatively easy to implement – either for a quick win or to establish social value credentials before you submit any tender responses.
Environmental initiatives
- Use Class II “ugly” fruit and veg in school lunches to avoid waste. They’re just as delicious and nutritious.
- Replace single-use plastic with more eco-friendly options (recycled and recyclable packaging, paper straws).
- Vegetable gardens grown and maintained by students – with lessons in composting
- Solar panels over teacher’s parking and bicycle sheds.
Economic initiatives
- Work placements for recent graduates.
- Apprenticeships as an alternative to university or college.
- National Living Wage for all employees in the supply chain.
Social initiatives
- Establish a food bank for students and their families who battle to make ends meet.
- Use local services for your school, including cleaning, waste removal, and equipment maintenance.
- Sponsor and support extracurricular activities, like chess clubs, school bands, drama, and art.
- Sponsor teacher training and workshops
Health & Safety Compliance
Health and safety are important in all industries and public sectors. It can be argued that it’s more important in educational institutions than other organisations. The question is: How can suppliers demonstrate their commitment to H&S when it comes to schools’ procurement regulations?
The first step is to become SSIP accredited. SSIP (Safety Schemes in Procurement) is a risk management framework designed primarily for suppliers to demonstrate their compliance with H&S regulations across multiple industries without having to obtain (and pay for) multiple certifications under multiple schemes.
You can’t go wrong with ISO certifications. The international standards organisation guarantees quality standards in almost any category you can think of. ISO 45001 certifies that organisations meet specific requirements for occupational health and safety (OH&S) management systems. It covers policies, operations, worker participation, hazard identification, risk assessment, legal and regulatory compliance, incident investigation, and continual improvement.
You can find more information on procurement in the Department for Education on GOV.UK.