School cleaning contracts go to the firm that makes a headteacher stop worrying about three things: who is in the building near children, whether the toilets are clean at 8.30am, and whether the cleaner who has been there eleven years gets treated properly on transfer.
Price matters. But in the school tenders we track, the quality questions decide it. CleanTender data, September 2026: 83 school and academy cleaning notices, 10 open right now, and a median published value of about £1.0m.
School cleaning tenders: the numbers that decide your bid
School cleaning notices tracked
CleanTender data, September 2026
83
Schools, academies and trusts. 10 open, 5 planned, 61 closed or awarded, 7 with no status published.
Median published value
33 notices with a value
£1.0m
Usually a whole-contract estimate over several years, not an annual figure.
Typical term
2026 awards with an end date
~3 years
9 of 11 end in autumn or winter 2029. One ends in 2028, one in 2030.
KCSIE 2026
Keeping Children Safe in Education
Enhanced DBS
Contractor staff with regular contact with children need an enhanced check. Identity checked on arrival.
KCSIE 2026 (gov.uk)Find a Tender notice line
Sub-central buyers, incl. VAT
£30k
Schools and academy trusts that advertise contracts from £30,000 publish on Find a Tender.
Full procurement threshold
PPN 023, sub-central, incl. VAT
£207,720
Above this, a school or trust must run a full Procurement Act 2023 process. Central government: £135,018.
PPN 023 threshold amountsSchools are one slice of the public market. If you are new to bidding, start with our UK cleaning tenders guide, then come back. If the school also wants lunches, the school catering contracts playbook covers the kitchen side with the same buyers.
What's in this guide¶
- How to win a UK school cleaning tender, step by step
- Who buys school cleaning
- Live school cleaning tenders and recent winners
- What school cleaning contracts are worth
- What heads, business managers and MAT estates leads each want
- Safeguarding and DBS
- Working around the school day, holidays and deep cleans
- COSHH, TUPE, KPIs and social value
- Two example answers, weak vs strong
- Pricing a school cleaning tender
- When not to bid
- FAQs
How to win a UK school cleaning tender, step by step¶
The complete end-to-end flow inside CleanTender. From sector setup to a submitted school cleaning bid in the time it used to take to read a single tender pack.
Eight steps from "never bid public sector" to a complete SQ response on the buyer's portal. First scan is free.
Step 1· 10 minutes
Build your school cleaning company profile
Set your sector to school cleaning, your service regions, enhanced DBS coverage of your staff, safeguarding training and policy, SSIP accreditation, insurance levels, school references, supervisors and the regions you cover, insurance levels, turnover, and operative count. CleanTender uses this to fit-score every live tender against your real capability so you only see the ones you can win.
Profile setup defines what you are bid-ready for Step 2· 5 minutes daily
Open the live school cleaning-tender feed
Every UK every UK maintained school, academy, multi academy trust and local authority schools cleaning tender tender, in one feed. Pre-filtered to your sector and geography. No false positives, no manual portal-trawling across FTS, Contracts Finder, and dozens of buyer e-procurement portals.
Live feed of in-scope school cleaning tenders, fit-scored Step 3· Daily digest
Get email alerts for new in-scope tenders
New school cleaning tenders matching your profile land in your inbox the day they publish. CleanTender batches them into a daily digest so you do not get notification fatigue, and links straight back to the in-app fit score.
Daily alerts for new in-scope tenders Step 4· 30 seconds
Run a fit-score evaluation on a target tender
One click runs a CleanTender Evaluation against the tender pack: scope match, geography fit, scale fit, compliance gap, and a plain-English win probability. Stops you bidding contracts you were never going to win.
Fit-score and win-probability before you commit a weekend Step 5· 1 minute
Spot compliance gaps before you start drafting
CleanTender runs a named compliance check against the tender pack: KCSIE 2026, enhanced DBS, COSHH, TUPE, insurance, SSIP, social value. Anything missing is flagged before you sink hours into a bid that auto-fails at SQ.
Compliance gaps surfaced before drafting Step 6· 2 minutes generation
Generate a full SQ + method-statement draft
CleanTender drafts a complete Standard Selection Questionnaire response using your profile data and the tender requirements: declaration block, company overview, contract experience, quality, training, COSHH, social value, H&S, insurance schedule. All ten sections, in one pass.
Full SQ draft generated in minutes, not days Step 7· Half a day
Refine, add evidence, and submit
Tune the draft, drop in named referees and certificate numbers, layer your quantified social value commitments, and submit through the buyer's portal. Most users compress a 30-60 hour first bid to 8-12 hours of focused review.
Step 8· Ongoing
Track outcomes and improve
Every bid logs in CleanTender with status, score, and (after standstill) the buyer's feedback. Use the standstill data to tune your next bid. Win rate compounds; first-bid completion is the only thing standing between you and a public-sector revenue line.
Who buys school cleaning¶
Four kinds of buyer. They behave very differently.
- Single academies and maintained schools. The school business manager runs it, often with a procurement adviser. In our data, buyer names like Procurement for Schools, Educo and RM&C show up running tenders for Harlington School, St Olave's Grammar, Wanstead High and Barham Primary.
- Multi academy trusts. One tender for every academy in the trust, or a framework the trust calls off from. Chorus Education Trust, Nicholas Postgate Catholic Academy Trust and Leigh Academies Trust all went to market this year.
- Local authorities. Buying for their maintained schools, usually as a framework. Hackney Schools Cleaning Framework is one. Vale of Glamorgan Council has a planned contract covering three special schools.
- Clusters. Schools that club together. "A Collaboration of Berkshire Schools" and a cluster of six primary schools in Harrow both awarded in 2026.
Behind all of them sits the DfE. Its Buying for schools guidance sets out five buying routes: use a DfE-approved framework, use a catalogue, get at least three quotes, advertise below the threshold, or run a full process above it. The DfE's Get help buying for schools service lists approved options under "cleaning services, grounds maintenance and sports facilities". If you are not on one of those frameworks, you still win work through routes 3, 4 and 5, which is where most of the notices below came from. The mechanics of getting onto public frameworks sit in how to get government cleaning contracts.
DfE guidance says "generally" medium value means £10,000 to £40,000 and high value means over £40,000. Below that, the school just asks three firms for quotes. No notice. The only way in is to be one of the three names the business manager already knows.
Live school cleaning tenders and recent winners¶
CleanTender data, September 2026. Values are the estimate the buyer published, usually covering the whole term.
| Buyer | Contract | Published value | Closes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Learning Community Trust | Cleaning services across the trust | £3.15m | 19 Oct 2026 |
| Educo (for Wanstead High School) | Wanstead High School cleaning | £1.37m | 7 Oct 2026 |
| St Mary's Church of England High School | Cleaning tender | £1.10m | Not published |
| West Derby School | Building cleaning services | £1.0m | 16 Oct 2026 |
| Shipston High School | Cleaning services | £958k | 26 Oct 2026 |
| Aston University STEM Education Trust | Cleaning services | £562k | 5 Oct 2026 |
| Robert May's School | Cleaning tender | Not published | 23 Oct 2026 |
| Yorkshire Learning Trust | Cleaning tender | Not published | 23 Oct 2026 |
| Hornchurch Academy Trust | Cleaning framework (planned) | £15m | Planned |
| Vale of Glamorgan Council | Three special schools (planned) | £984k | Planned |
Open the notices directly: West Derby School's £1m building cleaning contract, Wanstead High School's cleaning tender, the Learning Community Trust contract, Shipston High School and the Aston University STEM Education Trust tender. Hornchurch's £15m academy trust cleaning framework is still at the planned stage, which is the best time to look at it. Everything else sits in the live contracts directory.
Who won in 2026
| Buyer | Winner | Award value | Runs to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loxford School Trust | Birkin Cleaning Services | £5.65m | Dec 2029 |
| Chorus Education Trust (framework) | Lark Cleaning Services | £2.3m | Aug 2030 |
| Nicholas Postgate Catholic Academy Trust | Orian | £2.16m | Oct 2029 |
| The Bemrose School | CleanTEC Services | £1.3m | Oct 2029 |
| Attain Academy Partnership | Raigins | £677k | Oct 2029 |
| A Collaboration of Berkshire Schools | Purgo Supply Services | £261k | Oct 2029 |
| Star Academies (one primary) | AEFM | £245k | Sep 2028 |
Look at the names. Birkin won Loxford, Oakwood Park Grammar and The FitzWimarc School. D Brice & Company won Bishopshalt, London Academy of Excellence and The Coopers' Company and Coborn School. Lark won Harehills Primary, Lighthouse Education Trust and Chorus. These are regional education specialists, not national FM brands. A school wants a firm whose area manager answers the phone. That is a small firm's natural edge, so use it.
What school cleaning contracts are worth¶
e.g. Marlborough Primary, Harrow
e.g. Harlington School, Barlow RC High
Single secondary schools. The sweet spot.
Large secondaries and small trusts
Trust-wide contracts and frameworks, up to £24m
33 school, academy and trust cleaning notices with a published value, CleanTender data, September 2026. Single schools sit mostly under £1.4m. Every notice above £3m came from a trust or a trust framework. Source: CleanTender tender data
Divide by the term before you get excited. A £1m notice over three years with extension options might be £250k to £330k a year. That is one big secondary school, five days a week, two shifts. Winnable for a firm with a turnover around £1m. A £24m trust-wide contract like Leigh Academies Trust is not, and that is fine.
What heads, business managers and MAT estates leads each want¶
Three people read your bid, often in the same room. They care about different things. Write for all three.
| Reader | What they worry about | What wins them over |
|---|---|---|
| Headteacher | Safeguarding, complaints from parents, toilets, the smell of the building on open evening | Named DBS process, staff who stay, a supervisor they can ring before 8am |
| School business manager | Budget, contract admin, TUPE risk, being chased for invoices | A clear price schedule, monthly KPI report, no surprises at renewal |
| MAT estates or operations lead | Consistency across 5 to 30 academies, audit data, one contract to manage | The same audit tool on every site, trust-wide reporting, cover for sickness across sites |
| Governors (sometimes) | Value for money, reputation | Evidence from comparable schools, social value tied to local jobs |
Safeguarding and DBS: the question that decides school bids¶
Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 came into force on 1 September 2026. Its section on contractors is short and blunt.
- Schools set out safeguarding requirements in the contract.
- Contractor staff in regulated activity need an enhanced DBS check with children's barred list.
- Contractor staff not in regulated activity but with regular contact with children need an enhanced DBS check (without the barred list). It does not matter whether they work at one site or several.
- Anyone with no checks must never work unsupervised.
- Schools check contractor identity on arrival. Every time.
- Concerns about contractors go to the headteacher like concerns about any staff member.
Most school cleaning happens after 3.30pm. Most schools still ask for enhanced DBS on every operative, because breakfast clubs, after-school clubs and sixth formers doing revision in the library all put children in the building while your team works. Assume enhanced checks for everyone. Build it into your recruitment timeline and your price.
Who can apply for which check is on the DBS checks page on gov.uk. Your bid should also name your designated safeguarding lead, the training every operative gets before their first shift, and how you report a concern to the school's DSL. SSIP accreditation still matters for the health and safety side. Our guide to whether you need CHAS for cleaning tenders covers that.
Working around the school day, holidays and deep cleans¶
School cleaning has three rhythms. Miss one and you lose marks.
- Term-time evenings. The main clean, usually after the last lesson. Say what time you start and how you work around clubs, parents' evenings and lettings.
- Daytime cover. A day cleaner or caretaker support for spills, sickness and toilets at lunch. Many secondaries want one. Primaries often don't.
- Holiday periodic cleans. Summer is the big one: floors stripped and resealed, carpets extracted, high-level dusting, kitchens and toilets scrubbed top to bottom. It has to finish before INSET days. Name the week you start and the week you hand back.
Summer also brings contractors. Roofers, electricians, window fitters. Your holiday clean lands after theirs and gets blamed for their dust. Say how you sequence with the school's other works. Evaluators who have lived through a September open day with plaster dust on every sill will notice.
Put all of this into your method statement as a calendar, not a paragraph. The cleaning method statement template shows the structure. The staff hours calculator turns floor area and frequency into the hours you need to staff it.
COSHH, TUPE, KPIs and social value¶
COSHH
Chemicals in a building full of children get extra scrutiny. Locked cupboards, no decanting into unlabelled bottles, trolleys never left in corridors at 3.15pm. Name your product range and why you chose it. Our COSHH compliance guide for cleaning tenders walks through what evaluators check.
TUPE
If the school already outsources, the current cleaners almost certainly transfer to you. School cleaning teams stay put for years. Expect long service, part-time contracts, term-time-only pay, and sometimes local authority pension rights. Ask for the TUPE list at clarification stage and price it before you price anything else. Run the numbers through the TUPE cost estimator, and read our TUPE guide for soft FM tenders for the consultation steps the buyer will ask you to describe.
KPIs
Offer them before the school asks. Audit score by site, toilets checked at set times, complaints closed within an agreed window, holiday clean signed off before INSET day, staff turnover. For a MAT, the same KPIs on every academy in one monthly report. That single report is what an estates lead buys.
Social value
Schools are not bound by the central government social value model, and many single-school tenders weight it lightly or not at all. Trusts score it more often. Keep it local and concrete: jobs for parents in the school's postcode, a named apprenticeship, a careers talk for Year 10. A school can check those. It can't check a promise to "support the community".
Two example answers, weak vs strong¶
Both questions below mirror the kind of quality questions school and trust ITTs ask. The answers are illustrative. The gap between them is the gap between losing and winning.
Describe how you will safeguard pupils when your staff are working on the academy site, including vetting, training, identification and how you will report concerns.
Every operative on your site will hold an enhanced DBS check before their first shift. No exceptions, including cover staff.
Vetting. We follow KCSIE 2026 paragraphs 368 to 373. Enhanced DBS on all staff, with children's barred list for any role your school defines as regulated activity. Two references and right-to-work checks. Our HR manager holds the single record and shares it with your business manager before mobilisation, then monthly.
Training. Every operative completes safeguarding induction before starting, refreshed each September. Supervisors complete designated-person training. We brief staff on your own safeguarding policy in week one.
On site. Photo ID worn at all times and checked by reception on arrival. Staff sign in and out through your system. Nobody works unsupervised without checks in place.
Concerns. Staff report straight to your DSL, then tell our safeguarding lead. We never investigate ourselves. Allegations about our staff go to your headteacher, in line with Part four of KCSIE.
Evidence. Across [six comparable schools], we have had zero safeguarding findings at contract review in [period].
Why it scores
- First line commits to the check level and the timing.
- Cites the current guidance and the right paragraphs.
- Concerns go to the school's DSL, which is the route KCSIE expects.
- Tells the business manager what record lands on their desk and when.
- Proof slot for real references, left in brackets to fill with your own.
Illustrative answer written by CleanTender for this guide, not taken from a real bid. Scored on the 0-5 scale most school and academy trust ITTs use (0 unacceptable, 3 good, 5 excellent). Your buyer publishes its own scale in the ITT, so check it.
Explain how you will deliver the service around the school day and during school holidays, including the summer periodic clean, without disrupting teaching or other works on site.
Term-time cleaning runs 3.30pm to 7.30pm, with one day cleaner from 11am to 2pm for toilets at lunch and reactive spills. The summer clean finishes five working days before your first INSET day.
Term time. Four operatives and a working supervisor. Toilets and dining area first, classrooms after the last club leaves. Rooms used for lettings or parents' evenings get cleaned the next morning from 6.30am, agreed with your site manager each Friday.
Half terms. Carpet spot-cleaning, high-level dusting and toilet descaling on a published rota.
Summer. A four-week programme, block by block, shared with you by 1 June. Hard floors stripped and resealed, carpets hot-water extracted, kitchens and toilets scrubbed, furniture cleaned. We start each block after your building contractors hand it back and re-clean anything they dust after.
Sign-off. Your site manager walks each block with our supervisor and signs it off. Any snag is fixed within 24 hours.
Proof. At [comparable secondary school], we finished the 2025 summer programme [x] days early.
Why it scores
- Hours, headcount and the finish date in the first two lines.
- Covers term time, half terms and summer separately.
- Deals with other contractors, the problem every site manager has.
- Gives the school a sign-off step and a fix time.
Illustrative answer written by CleanTender for this guide, not taken from a real bid. Scored on the 0-5 scale most school and academy trust ITTs use (0 unacceptable, 3 good, 5 excellent). Your buyer publishes its own scale in the ITT, so check it.
More weak-vs-strong pairs across all five soft FM sectors sit in our bid writing examples. For the rest of the quality submission, how to win cleaning contracts covers what separates winners from the rest.
Pricing a school cleaning tender¶
School cleaning is labour. Wages are most of your cost, so price from hours up, not from a rate per square metre someone quoted at a trade show.
- Hours by area and frequency for term time. Then separately for holidays.
- TUPE staff at their actual terms. Not at your standard rate.
- DBS checks, safeguarding training and cover for sickness.
- Consumables, if the school wants them in. Many do.
- The summer programme as its own priced line, with equipment hire.
- Wage rises. Every April the National Living Wage moves. A three-year fixed price with no review clause is a gamble you will lose in year two.
Visit the site. Every school tender we have seen offers one. A site visit tells you which toilets flood, where the floor polish has worn through and whether the caretaker likes the current contractor. Our guide to bidding for cleaning contracts covers pricing schedules in more depth, and the commercial cleaning contracts guide shows how the private side prices the same work. Window work is often split out; window cleaning tenders covers it.
When not to bid¶
A bad school contract is worse than a bad office contract. Parents notice.
- You can't get enhanced DBS checks back on every operative before the start date.
- The trust's academies spread across counties you have no supervisor in.
- The TUPE list costs more than the published budget allows.
- You have no school reference and the ITT scores "comparable education experience" at 20% or more. Win a single primary first.
- The summer programme starts the week after award.
- The contract is over half your turnover.
Still unsure? The bid/no-bid decision tool takes five minutes. Or scan the live cleaning tenders for a single school closer to home.
Sources¶
Sources
- Keeping children safe in education 2026 (gov.uk) · In force from 1 September 2026. Contractor checks at paragraphs 368 to 373.
- Buying for schools (DfE, gov.uk) · DfE-approved buying options and the Get help buying for schools service.
- Find the right route to buy (DfE, gov.uk) · The five buying routes schools use and the value bands DfE suggests.
- Get help buying for schools · DfE service listing approved frameworks, including cleaning services.
- DBS checks: find out which check you need (gov.uk) · Basic, standard and enhanced checks explained.
- Disclosure and Barring Service (gov.uk) · The body that issues DBS checks.
- COSHH (HSE) · Control of Substances Hazardous to Health guidance.
- The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 · The law behind your COSHH answer.
- The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 · TUPE, on legislation.gov.uk.
- PPN 023: 2026 threshold amounts (gov.uk) · £135,018 central government, £207,720 sub-central, incl. VAT.
- Find a Tender Service · Where schools and trusts publish notices under the Procurement Act 2023.
- Academy trust handbook (gov.uk) · The rules academy trusts follow on spending and procurement.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
- Set alerts on Find a Tender and Contracts Finder for "school cleaning" and "academy cleaning", register with the procurement advisers schools use, and introduce yourself to school business managers near you so you are one of the three firms asked to quote on smaller jobs. Before you bid, get enhanced DBS checks on your team, a written safeguarding policy, SSIP accreditation such as CHAS, and the insurance levels the ITT asks for. Start with a single school in the £250k to £1m range, where most notices in our data sit. Visit the site, price the TUPE staff first, and answer the safeguarding and holiday-programme questions with names, times and dates. That first school becomes the reference that gets you onto trust-wide contracts.
- Yes, and in practice it is an enhanced check. Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 says contractor staff who have regular contact with children need an enhanced DBS check, and those in regulated activity need the children's barred list check as well. Anyone without checks must never work unsupervised, and the school must check identity on arrival. Most cleaning happens after school, but breakfast clubs, after-school clubs and sixth formers mean children are often on site, so nearly every school tender asks for enhanced checks on every operative. Build the time to get checks back into your mobilisation plan.
- The academy trust, not the local authority. A single-academy trust buys for its one school, usually through the business manager and sometimes a procurement adviser. A multi academy trust may tender one contract across all its academies, set up its own framework, or let each academy buy separately. Trusts can also use DfE-approved frameworks listed on the Get help buying for schools service. Maintained schools are different: their local authority may run a schools cleaning framework, such as Hackney's, that schools call off from.
- In CleanTender data for September 2026, the median published value of 33 school and academy cleaning notices was about £1.0m, usually covering the whole term rather than one year. Nine sat between £500k and £1m, typical for one secondary school over three years. Eight were above £3m, all trust-wide contracts or frameworks, the largest at £24m. Two were under £250k. Very small contracts often never get advertised, because DfE guidance lets schools get three quotes for lower-value purchases.
- About three years is normal. Of the 11 school cleaning awards we logged in 2026 with a published end date, nine end in autumn or winter 2029, one in 2028 and one in 2030. Many include extension options on top, so check the notice. Most start in the autumn term, which means the tender runs in spring or summer and mobilisation overlaps with the summer holiday clean.
- Mostly on Find a Tender. Since 24 February 2025, schools and academy trusts that advertise contracts from £30,000 including VAT publish notices there, and Contracts Finder only carries older procurements. Scotland uses Public Contracts Scotland and Wales uses Sell2Wales. Many schools also use a procurement adviser, so the tender documents sit on that adviser's portal. Local authority frameworks for maintained schools appear on the council's own portal. Below the advertising threshold, schools ask for three quotes, so local reputation still matters.
- Yes, and regional firms win most of them. In our 2026 award data, Birkin Cleaning Services, D Brice & Company and Lark Cleaning Services each won three school or trust contracts. Schools want a manager who answers the phone and a team that stays, which suits a smaller firm. Start with a single school near your base, get enhanced DBS on everyone, and use that school as the reference for your next bid. Leave trust-wide frameworks spread over several counties until you have supervisors in each area.