Finding edtech contract renewals at English schools and academy trusts

Coverage warning. Partial coverage: only notices published on Contracts Finder or Find a Tender are included, and many school purchases are never published. Re-procurement windows are estimates (contract end minus 9 to 3 months), not published dates. Check the official notice before acting.

Where the data comes from

DfE has said organisations need structured school and trust data for their own systems and otherwise scrape pages or process bulk CSV files; that is why it designed a read API for GIAS (DfE design history, 5 March 2026). GIAS and the contract notices stay free at source. What is sold here is the join, the categorisation and the renewal estimate.

How it is built

• Buyer filter: English schools, academy trusts, diocesan and schools buying organisations, and councils when the notice is clearly about schools. Universities, NHS, FE colleges and devolved-nation bodies are excluded.
• Categories: rules on titles with the main CPV code as fallback, into 13 edtech categories (below). Some rows are misfiled.
• Matching: Companies House number to trust, then school name plus postcode, then trust name, then unique school name. Councils are tied to their area. Unmatched buyers are dropped, not guessed.
• Renewal timing: contract_end is the published end, or start plus published duration (flagged). Extensions are reported, not added. The re-procurement window is end minus 9 months to end minus 3 months: an estimate.
• Organisation-level only: no named staff, no personal emails or phone numbers; supplier names that look like individuals are withheld.
• Checked: on the South East sample, 43 of 43 renewal rows matched the official record, and 90 of 90 checkable trust changes matched DfE's academies list.

Free: search and sample

Find a buyer id and see how much evidence exists before paying:

curl "https://pay.adamhaleworks.workers.dev/api/school-signals/search?q=ACTIVATE%20LEARNING"

Real answer (first result, snapshot 2026-10-14):

{
  "id": "trust:15710",
  "name": "ACTIVATE LEARNING EDUCATION TRUST",
  "kind": "trust",
  "region": "South East",
  "local_authority": null,
  "evidence": {
    "published_contracts": 20,
    "renewals_next_12_months": 3,
    "live_tenders": 0,
    "trust_changes": 0
  },
  "brief_available": true
}

The South East sample (CSV zip) and its renewals report (PDF) show the full table format.

Paid: renewal queries, $0.03

GET /x402/v1/school-renewals returns up to 25 contracts with a named incumbent whose end date falls in your window, soonest first. Parameters: ending_within_months (1-24, default 12), include_recently_ended, category, region, supplier, buyer. If nothing matches you get a 404 and no payment request; the 402 carries X-Result-Count.

GET https://pay.adamhaleworks.workers.dev/x402/v1/school-renewals?ending_within_months=6&category=MIS+%26+school+administration+software

One real row from that query (13 matched at build time):

{
  "buyer": {
    "id": "trust:17050",
    "name": "ESTEEM MULTI-ACADEMY TRUST",
    "kind": "trust",
    "region": "East Midlands",
    "local_authority": null
  },
  "category": "MIS & school administration software",
  "title": "Procurement of Management Information System",
  "incumbent": "ARBOR EDUCATION PARTNERS LIMITED",
  "published_value_gbp": 99992.85,
  "awarded_value_gbp": 99992.85,
  "estimated_value_gbp": 99992.85,
  "award_date": "2023-10-24",
  "contract_start": "2024-01-01",
  "contract_end": "2026-12-31",
  "contract_end_basis": "published end date",
  "months_to_end": 2.4,
  "extension": {
    "possible": false,
    "max_extension_end": null,
    "note": null
  },
  "estimated_reprocurement_window": {
    "start": "2026-03-31",
    "end": "2026-09-30",
    "basis": "estimate: contract end minus 9 to 3 months, not a published date"
  },
  "procurement_method": "Call-off from a framework agreement",
  "frameworks_mentioned": "CCS G-Cloud",
  "possible_later_notice": null,
  "source": {
    "publisher": "Contracts Finder",
    "notice_type": "compiled",
    "published": "2023-11-23",
    "notice_url": "https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/25299b4e-8ee9-42bb-84ea-4619a80f3011",
    "record_api_url": "https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/api/rest/2/get_published_notice/json/25299b4e-8ee9-42bb-84ea-4619a80f3011"
  }
}

Paid: buyer brief, $0.20

GET /x402/v1/school-buyer-brief?buyer=<id> for one school (school:<URN>), trust (trust:<GIAS UID>) or council (org:<slug>): hierarchy, contracts and incumbents, upcoming renewals with windows, live tenders, trust changes in the last 12 months and source links. A school brief includes its trust's contracts. Ambiguous names get a 409 with candidates; buyers with no published evidence get a 404; neither is charged.

GET https://pay.adamhaleworks.workers.dev/x402/v1/school-buyer-brief?buyer=trust:15710

Summary block of that real brief:

{
  "published_contracts": 20,
  "with_named_incumbent": 17,
  "renewals_next_12_months": 3,
  "live_tenders": 0,
  "trust_changes": 0,
  "scope_note": "Includes contracts let by the trust's schools themselves."
}

Paid: England snapshot, 295 USDC

The whole England build as of 2026-10-14: an Excel workbook and 9 CSVs (renewals, 1,363 contracts, 33 live tenders, 1,123 trust changes, 2,028 trusts, 22,981 schools, incumbents, framework usage, DfE buying options), the data dictionary, methodology, licence, AI disclosure and a SHA-256 manifest. Immutable: no refreshes. Licence: 12 months internal use, up to 3 named users.

GET https://pay.adamhaleworks.workers.dev/x402/v1/school-signals-england-snapshot

Attribution and freshness

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. (OGL v3.0). Snapshot date: 2026-10-14; every answer repeats it. Contract windows are computed against the day you ask. API terms: /terms/.