YPO best in class through 2021

In many ways, 2021 was an extension of 2020. It’s hard to imagine, but within a week of entering the year, the UK was put into its third national lockdown, and the majority of primary and secondary school children were once again learning from home rather than in the classroom.

Over the course of the year, education establishments around the UK have had to react to a myriad of scenarios, including phasing pupils back into classroom learning, helping individual children learn from home, and providing a whole new level of support to families and vulnerable children.

With the ongoing uncertainty about closures, ways of learning and looking after children, schools have faced financial pulls from many angles. As one of the UK’s largest public sector buying organisation, YPO has acted as a support system for many institutions – not only by providing value product supplies and efficient contract services, but also by allowing schools to focus on what matters, assisting local authorities during the ongoing school meals issue and funnelling profit back to schools.

Finding efficiencies

Providing practical resources and solutions has always been a key service offered by YPO, but with 2021 bringing new focuses for schools, including getting back to running ‘as usual’ in the latter half of the year, our Contracts for Schools team have continued to demonstrate how valuable their knowledge and expertise is. They provide a wealth of buying expertise for free, enabling schools to maximise their buying power and simplifying the sometimes-complicated buying process.

One area in which we have been able to make life easier for schools is through the provision of cleaning contracts. We have worked with school business managers throughout the year, guiding them through the process and helping them make the best choices - often using our flexible dynamic purchasing systems (DPS) to recommend compliant contracts and companies. We aim to make schools feel completely confident that they are receiving a value service that follows all regulations - and particularly during Covid-19, that their school and its pupils are looked after and kept clean - without them having to take on any extra burden and stress.

Providing school meals

The provision of free school meals has been one of the biggest news stories of the year, and following campaigns backed by Marcus Rashford, local authorities were tasked with supplying schools and vulnerable families with quality produce. The logistics of this are not often spoken about, but it requires a huge amount of coordination between authorities, schools, and contract suppliers, and YPO played a significant part in the rollout of meals.

Alongside school meals, YPO supported a number of local authorities in providing activity packs to vulnerable families throughout the holidays. Over 27,300 kits filled with a range of stationery and arts and crafts products, as well as sports products to encourage active family play, were made available. Through close work with local authorities, we were able to cater for families and help children of all ages, right down to early years.

Giving back

In a year that has stretched the financial resources of schools thin, we were delighted to be able to give back to schools, enabling them to purchase additional resources for their classrooms. Through our loyalty scheme, when schools spend money on resources from YPO, we return a share of our profits back to them in the form of vouchers, enabling teachers and school business managers to allocate the funds into projects and further resources that will benefit their pupils and their education.

Since its introduction in 2011, the loyalty scheme has given back £17.9 million to YPO customers in the public sector, and this year alone schools received their share of £1.18 million.

To learn more about YPO visit www.ypo.co.uk