Procurement, the GCA Framework and MSPs: What Schools and MATs Need to Know

Procurement can feel daunting. As a former school and MAT leader, I know from experience that it is one more area of responsibility to navigate alongside teaching and learning, safeguarding, staffing, budgets, and school improvement.

For many school leaders, procurement is not an area in which they have had extensive professional experience, yet they are still expected to make informed decisions about how public money is spent.

At the same time, schools and trusts have a responsibility to secure good value from public money and to follow the appropriate procurement rules when purchasing goods and services.

So, what does good procurement look like, and how can frameworks and managed service providers (MSPs) help?

What is procurement?

At its simplest, procurement is the process of identifying what your organisation needs, finding an appropriate supplier, assessing the options available, and entering into an agreement to provide those goods or services.

For a school, this could mean procuring anything from catering and cleaning services to IT, professional services, or temporary staffing.

The process becomes more complex as the value and nature of the purchase increases. Schools need to consider their own procurement policies, the applicable legislation, and whether there is an existing framework or other compliant route that can be used.

For school and MAT leaders, this can sometimes feel like another specialist area to navigate. The person leading a procurement might be a headteacher, business manager, or operations lead who has considerable expertise in running a school, but limited experience of procurement.

That can make the process feel more complicated than it needs to be.

Why can procurement feel daunting for schools?

There is a particular challenge in education: school leaders are experts in education, not necessarily procurement.

A senior leader may know exactly what their school needs from a staffing provider, for example. They may understand the challenges around recruitment, know the profile of candidates they need, and have a clear view of what good service looks like.

But turning those requirements into a procurement specification, understanding the available routes to market, comparing suppliers against defined criteria, and ensuring the process is compliant can feel like a completely different discipline.

There is also a natural concern around getting things wrong.

Procurement involves public money, contractual commitments, and specific obligations under the Procurement Act 2023. The Department for Education advises schools to understand their procurement obligations and to follow their own school's or trust's procurement rules.

The answer is not for school leaders to become procurement specialists overnight.

It is about making use of the structures, frameworks, and specialist support available.

What is the GCA framework?

The Government Commercial Agency (GCA) provides commercial agreements that enable public sector organisations to purchase goods and services from pre-approved suppliers.

You may previously have heard these referred to as Crown Commercial Service (CCS) frameworks. The Crown Commercial Service was replaced by the Government Commercial Agency in April 2026.

A framework provides an established route to market. Suppliers have already gone through a competitive process to become approved suppliers on the relevant agreement.

Frameworks are often divided into lots, with each lot covering a particular type of service or requirement.

For schools and MATs, this can provide a structured alternative to starting a procurement process entirely from scratch.

However, it is important to remember that a framework is not itself a contract. The specific contract comes when a buyer makes a purchase or enters into a call-off agreement under the framework.

The framework will also specify how buyers can appoint a supplier, which may include direct award or a competitive process.

The GCA Supply Teachers and Education Recruitment Framework

For schools and MATs, one particularly relevant example is the GCA Supply Teachers and Education Recruitment Framework (RM6376).

The framework provides routes for schools and trusts to procure temporary and permanent education staffing through approved suppliers.

It includes different lots reflecting different ways of working with education recruitment providers.

Lot 1 allows schools and trusts to work directly with one or more agencies.

Lot 2 is Managed Service Provision. This is where the concept of an MSP becomes particularly interesting for education.

What is an MSP?

MSP stands for Managed Service Provider.

Rather than a school or trust managing relationships with multiple recruitment agencies itself, an MSP provides a centralised service for managing staffing requirements.

Under Lot 2 of the GCA framework, an MSP can provide a single point of contact for workforce and staffing requirements, with access to teachers and education support staff either directly from the MSP or through a supply chain of other agencies.

The framework also provides for temporary, permanent, and fixed-term appointments, alongside technology that can support areas such as bookings, invoicing, electronic timesheets, and management information.

In practical terms, this can mean moving from:

• "We have several agencies, several contacts, different processes, and multiple invoices to manage."

to:

• "We have one managed service through which our staffing requirements are coordinated."

That distinction can be particularly valuable for larger schools and MATs where temporary staffing forms a significant part of their expenditure and administrative workload.

What could an MSP mean for a school or MAT?

An MSP isn't simply about finding someone to fill a vacancy.

The potential value is in managing the process around workforce supply.

Depending on the service provided, this can include:

• A single point of contact for staffing requirements

• Coordinating multiple recruitment agencies

• Access to a wider supply chain

• Temporary, permanent, and fixed-term recruitment

• A centralised booking process

• Electronic timesheets

• Consolidated invoicing

• Management information and reporting

• Greater visibility of staffing spend

• A more consistent process across schools within a MAT

For a MAT, this can be particularly relevant.

Rather than each individual school developing its own relationships and processes, a trust can establish a more consistent approach across its schools while retaining visibility of local staffing requirements.

The objective isn't simply to centralise for the sake of centralisation. It is about creating a process that gives leaders greater visibility, consistency, and control.

Does using a framework make procurement disappear?

No – and this is an important distinction.

Using a framework can provide a compliant route to market, but schools and trusts still need to understand the rules of the particular framework and follow the relevant procurement process.

Depending on the framework and circumstances, this could involve selecting a supplier directly or running a competitive process between suppliers on the framework. The GCA sets out the different routes available for its frameworks.

The DfE similarly advises schools that each framework will set out how suppliers should be selected and how an order should be placed.

This is why specialist support can be valuable.

A school leader shouldn't feel that they need to understand every technical aspect of procurement before they can have a conversation about improving their staffing model.

Instead, the starting point should be understanding the problem:

What are we trying to achieve?

• Do you want to reduce administrative workload?

• Do you want greater visibility of staffing expenditure?

• Are multiple agencies currently being managed across different schools?

• Would a single point of contact make life easier for school leaders?

• Do you want better management information?

• Or are you looking for a more structured approach to both temporary and permanent recruitment?

Those questions should come before the procurement terminology.

Introducing Folio

Recognising the challenges that schools and MATs can face when managing education recruitment, Prospero Group is developing Folio, its new Managed Service Provider offering under Lot 2 of the GCA Supply Teachers and Education Recruitment Framework.

Folio is being designed to provide schools and MATs with a more coordinated approach to managing their staffing requirements.

The ambition is straightforward: to make the management of education staffing simpler, more transparent, and more joined-up.

For schools and trusts, that means having a dedicated partner to help manage the process rather than having to coordinate multiple recruitment agencies and processes independently.

For MATs in particular, Folio can provide an opportunity to consider staffing procurement at trust level while still recognising the individual requirements of each school.

And importantly, Folio's role is not simply about supplying candidates. It is about managing the service around workforce supply.

Procurement doesn't need to be intimidating

Procurement is an important part of running any school or MAT, but it shouldn't become a barrier to finding better ways of working.

For school leaders who don't work in procurement every day, the terminology can sometimes make the process appear more complicated than it really is.

Frameworks such as those provided by the GCA exist to provide structured routes for public sector organisations to purchase goods and services. They provide pre-approved suppliers and established routes for buying, while setting out the rules that buyers need to follow.

For schools and MATs considering their approach to education recruitment, an MSP can go one step further by bringing the management of that staffing supply together under one service.

Ultimately, good procurement isn't just about compliance.

It is about making informed decisions about how public money is spent, securing appropriate value, and finding services that genuinely meet the needs of the children, young people, and staff an organisation serves.

For schools and MATs exploring what a managed approach to education recruitment could look like, Folio could be part of that conversation.

Find out more about Folio, or book a conversation with our team.