Invitation for schools to sign up to be part of the Department of Education pilot ‘Schools Buying Strategy’
The schools' buying strategy is intended to support schools’ to save over £1 billion a year by 2019-20 on their non-staff spend. It aims to help all schools improve how they buy goods and services – allowing them to maximise the resources they can invest in high quality education for their pupils and supporting them in managing cost pressures.
One of the key initiatives is to provide School Buying Hubs to help schools with more complex buying activities. School Buying Hubs are intended to help schools achieve savings where goods and services which can be effectively bought on a regional basis or where the services are complex, infrequently purchased and high value.
The Schools Buying Hubs will offer the following key services:
• expert advice and guidance on procurement and purchasing
• help with complex contracts, particularly services such as technology services, catering, cleaning and premises
• promotion of local collaboration and aggregation, where there is an opportunity to reduce costs on areas such as learning resources, ICT learning resources and administrative supplies
How you can be involved
We want to promote and urge as many participants in the South West and North West region for the pilot to thoroughly test this approach to ensure the proposed functions are of most use to schools. Participation in the pilot will be free to eligible schools during the pilot period. If you would like to participate, please copy and paste the (consult...) link into your browser.
The School Buying Hubs will be supported by local network development leads who are building intelligence on local SBM networks; identifying schools unserved by a network and identifying upcoming events. Contact CG.Communications@education.gov.uk for more information and for the links below.
For information and to register your interest copy and paste the links below…….
Buying Strategy - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/schools-buying-strategy
https://consult.education.gov.uk/schools-commerical-team/927e1fd1/
