If your organisation supports education recruitment advertising, resourcing, or student recruitment marketing, the NERARS framework refresh is one to take seriously now.
Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium (SUPC), via Southern Universities Management Services (SUMS), has published a Preliminary Market Engagement (PME) notice for the re-tender of the Education Recruitment Advertising and Resourcing Services (NERARS) Framework Agreement, with an estimated total value of £120,000,000 (including VAT).
PME is where frameworks get shaped: pricing models, lot boundaries, reporting expectations, and how buyers want suppliers to evidence value. If you deliver this kind of work, you can use PME to reduce future friction and set yourself up to score better later.
What NERARS covers (and why the lot split matters)
The current framework structure is described in the Find a Tender notice as consisting of two lots:
Lot 1: Education Recruitment Advertising & Resourcing
This is broad, spanning “all types of advertising services” for recruitment of staff and associated creative and media activity (for example advertisement creation/production, copywriting/typesetting, media buying, art direction and brand management, including full creative services where required).
Lot 2: Student Recruitment Marketing
Focused on student recruitment advertising to attract UK and overseas students, with emphasis on media buying and advertisement placement.
For suppliers, that split tends to create two very different “best route to win” profiles:
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Lot 1 often rewards agencies and partners who can combine creative + channel strategy + compliant buying + measurable outcomes across roles that have safeguarding, equality and inclusion considerations.
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Lot 2 is frequently won on data-led performance marketing, channel optimisation, governance, and the ability to demonstrate how spend converts into measurable outcomes (and how you’ll report it clearly).
Dates and engagement: don’t get caught by the small print
The notice lists an engagement deadline of 30 April 2026. However, the PME survey response deadline is 27 February 2026, via an Office Forms questionnaire.
In practice, that earlier date is the one that matters if you want your feedback to shape the procurement.
The notice also gives an estimated tender notice publication date of 16 June 2026.
How to use PME to increase your chances later
SUPC’s stated aim is to understand commercial models and gather supplier feedback to inform the pricing model and specification for the next iteration. That’s your opening to be specific about what makes a framework commercially workable and deliverable.
A strong PME response usually does four things:
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Explains how pricing works in real life
Not just “we charge X%”, but how you handle media margins, management fees, transparency, rebates, rate cards, and what you do when requirements change mid-campaign. -
Highlights what “good” reporting looks like
Public sector buyers want spend control and governance, but they also need outputs they can share internally. Suggest a practical reporting pack: outcomes, reach, conversion (where applicable), EDI considerations, and lessons learned. -
Makes delivery risk easy to manage
Set out how you control compliance, approvals, brand governance, and supplier management across print/digital/media buying where relevant. -
Keeps the framework accessible
The notice flags suitability for SMEs and VCSEs.
If certain requirements would unintentionally exclude strong specialists (without improving outcomes), PME is the moment to say so constructively.
Bid prep checklist
If you intend to bid when the tender is published, a few practical actions now will save weeks later:
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Build a tight evidence set: 3–5 case studies aligned to each lot you want, with before/after metrics and a clear narrative of what you did and how it was governed.
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Document your buying and governance model: how you ensure transparency, approvals, auditability and data protection across campaigns.
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Sharpen your social value story: education recruitment and student marketing often lend themselves to skills, employability, local spend, and inclusive outreach, but evaluators score what you can evidence and manage.
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Decide your “lane”: the organisations that win frameworks are usually the ones that can be summed up in a sentence (and then proven with evidence). That’s especially true in recruitment markets, where procurement teams see many similar claims. It’s why a clear, credible position matters in public sector recruitment bids.
How Thornton & Lowe helps on opportunities like NERARS
Framework bids in recruitment and marketing are rarely won by capability alone; they’re won by how clearly you prove it, how well you de-risk delivery for the buyer, and how easy you make evaluation.
Thornton & Lowe helps suppliers shape their bid strategy early, strengthen evidence libraries, and produce compliant, high-scoring submissions through our bid writing and review support. When the ITT drops, that means faster mobilisation, fewer compliance errors, and clearer answers that directly track the scoring criteria, especially on pricing narrative, governance, and measurable outcomes.
Next step
You can review the opportunity details in the NERARS notice on Find a Tender. If you’re planning to engage, prioritise the PME questionnaire timing and use it to influence the pricing and spec in your favour.
If you’d like Thornton & Lowe to support your NERARS approach, we can run a quick readiness review (lot fit, evidence gaps, and likely scoring hotspots), then help you turn that into a structured plan for the tender stage. Reply with which lot(s) you’re targeting and your preferred delivery model, and we’ll outline a practical route to a stronger submission.
