As the 2026/27 academic year gets ever closer, the volume of tendering activity across the skills and employment sector is significant. Many Colleges and Combined Authority areas have published funding opportunities across adult skills, apprenticeships and 16-19 provision and with Skills England now operational and driving a renewed national focus on workforce development, commissioners across England are actively looking for delivery partners.
For training providers, the message is clear: there are real opportunities available right now. But opportunity alone does not win contracts. The organisations that secure funding are those that approach tendering with discipline, preparation and a clear understanding of what commissioners need to see.
This article sets out the good practice principles that separate consistent contract winners from those who bid often but win rarely.
Know What Is Out There Before You Start Writing
The first principle of good tendering practice is intelligence — and it starts long before a specification is published. Commissioners across local authorities, mayoral combined authorities, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education are actively procuring skills provision for 2026/27 and beyond. Contracts Finder and Find a Tender are updated regularly, with hundreds of education and training notices published each month across England.
The training providers that win consistently are not reactive. They monitor the funding landscape continuously, understand which bodies are commissioning in their geography, and position themselves before a tender appears. By the time a specification lands, they already know the commissioner’s priorities, the local labour market context, and the outcomes they will be expected to deliver.
If you are not monitoring procurement portals at least weekly, you are already behind.
Be Selective: Not Every Bid Is Worth Entering
One of the most damaging myths in tendering is that submitting more bids increases your chances of winning. In practice, the opposite is often true. Bidding on contracts that are a poor fit for your organisation — in terms of geography, learner group, contract value, or delivery model — diverts resource from bids you could genuinely win and produces submissions that are unconvincing because the evidence does not align.
Before committing resource to any tender, carry out a structured go/no-go assessment. Score the opportunity across key criteria: strategic fit, track record alignment, financial viability, capacity to deliver, competitive position, and commissioner relationship. If the total score does not meet your threshold, walk away. There will be a better bid.
Build Your Evidence Before You Need It
The single most common reason strong training providers lose contracts they are qualified to deliver is insufficient evidence in their track record section. Commissioners cannot award marks for claims they cannot verify — and vague statements about extensive experience earn nothing in a scored evaluation.
The fix is not complicated, but it requires consistent effort before a tender appears. Every programme you deliver should generate systematic outcome data starts, completions and withdrawals by learner characteristic; employment, training and further learning outcomes at four, eight and thirteen weeks; learner satisfaction scores; and at least one case study per programme capturing a specific learner journey and progression outcome.
With Skills England’s focus on occupational outcomes and employer engagement intensifying in 2026/27, commissioners will increasingly want to see data that connects your delivery to real labour market outcomes. Build the evidence now.
Write for the Commissioner, Not for Yourself
Good tender writing begins with a simple discipline: answer the question asked, in the order it was asked, using the commissioner’s own language.
This sounds straightforward. It is not widely practised. Many organisations write responses that describe what they do well rather than addressing what the commissioner specifically needs to know. They use their own terminology rather than the language of the specification. They lead with context and background when commissioners want to see the answer in the first two sentences.
Structure every response clearly: demonstrate that you understand the commissioner’s requirement, state precisely what you will do, evidence it with specific and quantified examples, and connect the outcome back to the commissioner’s goal. Every paragraph should be earning marks. If it is not, remove it.
Give Yourself Time to Review
The final principle is the most straightforward and the most often ignored. Set an internal submission deadline at least five working days before the commissioner’s deadline and use that time for a rigorous review: a fresh reading by someone who did not write it, a compliance check against the specification, a word count check, and a final proofread.
Bids submitted at the last minute almost always contain errors — exceeded word counts, missing appendices, inconsistent figures. In a competitive market, these are the details that cost marks and contracts.
The Opportunity Is There
With a large number of funders issuing funding agreements the pipeline of contracting opportunities for training providers in England is substantial. The question is not whether opportunities exist. The question is whether your organisation is positioned to compete for them credibly.
If you would like support assessing your bid readiness, download our free Tender Health Check at machlo.co.uk — or book a free 30-minute call with the Machlo team to discuss an upcoming opportunity.
