Buying advice for schools

Find links to our advice on buying goods and services for schools and a calendar of our upcoming Buying 101 events.

Level of compliance Main audience Other

Inform

  • Principals and Tumuaki,
  • Staff responsible for buying in schools
  • Boards

General buying advice

Schools can save money and time and reduce risk by buying smartly.

The following advice relates to buying goods and services for schools.

If you are buying construction works and construction related services for school property, the school property procurement framework applies.

School property procurement framework

The basics of buying

Buying basics

Conflicts of interest

The buying process

Running a competitive buying process

Writing a specification of requirements

Evaluating a supplier’s offer

Buying collaboratively

Collaborative contracts explained

Buying with other schools

Sharing staff members across schools

Understanding contracts

Key contract considerations

Managing contracts

Contract registers

Buying advice for common goods and services

Find advice on buying specific categories of goods and services using collaborative contracts.

Buying advice for common categories

The popular categories for the goods and services listed on the above page include:

Print technology and associated services

Office supplies

Banking services

Vehicles

Electricity supply

IT hardware

Workplace and classroom furniture

Buying 101 advice sessions

Our Schools Buying team runs Buying 101 advice sessions through Microsoft Teams.

Any staff responsible for buying at your school is encouraged to join the sessions and learn how to get the most value from purchases.

If you are interested, email school.buying@education.govt.nz to let us know which session (or sessions) you would like to join.

We will send you the Microsoft Teams link to join the session.

Term 1 2024 sessions

Topic

Date

Buying 101 (General good buying practice)

11:00am to 11:30am

Wednesday March 6th 2024

Running a 'competitive process' for a purchase

11:00am to 11:30am

Wednesday March 21st 2024

Buying IT hardware

3:15pm to 3:45pm 

Thursday April 4th 2024

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