Department for Education – Procurement at DfE

Latest contracting opportunities

We, and our executive agencies, advertise new contracting opportunities in the following places, where appropriate:

Forthcoming opportunities

We use a variety of means to notify suppliers of future opportunities, including:

DUNS numbers

‘DUNS numbers’ provide us with valuable information about which suppliers are bidding for our contracts. We encourage interested suppliers to register with DUNS numbers.

Prompt payment policy

We follow government policy and pay all correctly submitted invoices within 10 days of receiving them at the physical or electronic address that we’ve specified.

Jaggaer: the DfE etendering portal

Jaggaer is an etendering system used by DfE and its executive agencies. It is a password-protected online service.

As a potential supplier you should register with Jaggaer so that you can:

view opportunities to tender
submit tender responses

For help with registration please use the support links on the Jaggaer portal.

The Education and Children’s Social Care Dynamic Purchasing System (ECSC DPS) has moved to the Jaggaer commercial platform.

We use the ECSC DPS to buy professional, educational and children’s social care services to support government policy in schools and local authorities.

If you would like to apply to join the ECSC DPS, you can do so by logging in or registering on the Jaggaer portal.

As a potential supplier you should register with Jaggaer and apply to join the ECSC DPS so that you can:

apply to become a member of the ECSC DPS

view ECSC DPS opportunities to tender
submit ECSC DPS tender responses

Prior to 22 December 2020, the DfE used Redimo2 to host the ECSC DPS. All ECSC DPS members who gained approval prior to the 22 December 2020 will be migrated to Jaggaer with their membership status retained.

Further information on how this will be managed and any action required has been issued directly to existing members.

For any queries, please email the commercial contact point team.

Terms and conditions for using the ECSC DPS

If you wish to join the ECSC DPS and be eligible for contracts, you must:

register your interest on Jaggaer

have knowledge of, and experience in, early years, schools or children’s services
be able to show that you have one or more of the ECSC skill sets, which we describe in the ECSC handbook
read and accept the membership of ECSC framework terms and conditions
read and accept the supply of services by ECSC professionals terms and conditions
confirm none of the criteria for mandatory exclusion apply
confirm you are compliant with IR35 tax legislation

Go to the ECSC Contracts Finder notice where you will find the following documents with additional information:

invitation to participate
applying for ECSC membership

ECSC handbook (including daily rates and skill set descriptions)
terms and conditions for call-off

DPS agreement
mandatory exclusion criteria

Data handling and security

If you handle data, you must make sure that you comply with our departmental security procedures. Read our Data handling and security standards guidance (PDF, 232KB, 13 pages) for more information.

Standard terms and conditions for DfE contracts

If you would like to know which terms and conditions apply when bidding for a particular DfE contract, contact the person named in the advertisement and tender documentation.

Generally, we use the Cabinet Office short form, mid-tier and model services contract terms and conditions which are regularly updated. We may augment these terms with a small number of DfE specific terms and conditions.

Where buying from a framework we use the corresponding Crown Commercial service Framework terms and conditions. Again, we may augment these terms with a small number of DfE specific terms and conditions.

Purchase orders

Our purchase orders (documents that ask a company to supply goods and give details of price, method and date of payment) are subject to our terms and conditions for goods (PDF, 148KB, 8 pages).

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs)

To recognise the importance of SMEs to the UK economy, the government has set a target to award 33% of the money it spends on third-party suppliers to SMEs by the end of 2022.

How we support SMEs

We help to reach this target by putting SMEs at the centre of our procurement policies. We encourage SMEs to work with us directly or as part of the supply chain by:

having a tender process that treats SMEs fairly and by trying to keep our tender documents simple
supporting commercial relationships between the department and SMEs and SMEs and larger organisations
monitoring our SME spend against government and our own targets and reporting to Cabinet Office for publication

What we buy from SMEs

The types of goods and services we often buy from SMEs include:

school construction
professional and consultancy services
books and learning materials
legal services
office supplies
photocopying and printing services
catering services
cleaning and facilities management services
furniture
accountancy and audit
transport services

Opportunities for SMEs

We advertise new opportunities on contracts finder.

We also run innovation days where suppliers can meet each other and showcase what they offer. We advertise these on LinkedIn and Twitter.

As part of our SME action plan commitment to breaking down barriers SMEs face in achieving DFE’s, and wider government contracts, we have produced guidance:

More information

Also read our:

Find out if you qualify as an SME by reading the definition on the European Commission website.

DfE SME case study

Read about our Get help with technology programme with Computacenter (UK) Ltd and Abzorb Group.

Crown representative for SMEs

Read about the Small Business Crown Representative, Martin Traynor.

UK procurement law

We must follow UK laws that govern how we may buy goods, services and works over a specified value or ‘threshold’.

Where we expect the estimated value of a contract to be over the relevant threshold, we must advertise our requirements on FTS.

The procurement thresholds are published by the Cabinet Office.

How we process your personal data

Our personal information charter contains the standards you can expect from DfE when we ask for, and hold, your personal information.

Equality and diversity in procurement

There is an expectation that all suppliers to DfE endorse and demonstrate a commitment to the DfE’s equality objectives as set out in the single department plan, which promotes equality and diversity.

Public sector Equality Duty guidance for suppliers

DfE is subject to the public sector Equality Duty. The Equality Duty is relevant where services are contracted to be either:

delivered on DfE premises
carrying out a public function
employee or public/school facing

Where organisations are delivering services under any of those categories they will be under the same Equality Duty as the department. The Public Sector Equality Duty (Equality Duty) Guidance for Suppliers to DfE (PDF, 123KB, 2 pages) explains what might be required under the Equality Duty.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) for government’s most important contracts

You can now view a list of central government’s most important contracts, showing up to 4 relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) for those contracts, and the performance of the vendor against those KPIs.